The House Commerce Committee plans to deal with telecom reform in separate bills, starting with IP issues, Brendon Weiss, aide to Rep. Fossella (R-N.Y.) said Tues. night at an FCBA seminar. Weiss said the panel wants to start circulating a draft IP bill by mid-May. The committee leadership hopes to have a bill on the floor this year or early next, he said.

Sale of Adelphia to Time Warner-Comcast wouldn’t be in the public interest of cities and local franchising authorities that oversee cable rates, advocacy groups warned mayors Wed. in a letter to cities within the deal’s radius. “We ask you to join us in opposing the sale of Adelphia Corp.’s cable systems to Comcast and Time Warner Cable and the transfer of local Adelphia cable franchises to those companies,” the letter said.

Leading antitrust senators said Tues. they still have worries about the proposed SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI mergers, while a telecom analyst, industry representatives and a consumer advocate all stressed the importance of maintaining access to key networks. During a Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearing on the mergers, Precursor Group CEO Scott Cleland told senators he doesn’t believe the mergers should be denied, calling the “biggest threat” not pricing power, but “subtle attempts to gain network power by impeding and denying network access.” Other witnesses echoed this sentiment.

FCC authority to prevent “packet discrimination” against VoIP and other services was debated Tues. at a panel hosted by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus. The issue arose with VoIP providers, including Vonage, having their ports blocked by ISP Madison River Communications and the FCC’s consent decree against Madison River (CD March 4 p12).

APCO said it strongly opposed a Vonage request that public safety officials accept VoIP emergency calls through their nonemergency administrative phone numbers as an alternative to 911. In a news release Fri., APCO said Vonage has asked that Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) “be forced to alter their operations” and accept emergency calls on 10-digit numbers reserved for nonemergency calls. “This is not an acceptable solution, as it negates the benefits of a 21st century technology by reverting back to a 1960’s method of reporting life threatening emergencies,” said APCO Pres. Greg Ballentine. “Routing VoIP 911 calls to 10-digit emergency numbers disrupts and strains the limited resources of PSAPs,” he said. The 10-digit numbers generally carry nonemergency calls to police or fire departments or their employees. Vonage in an April 7 ex parte filing asked the FCC to issue rules prohibiting PSAPs from barring public access to administrative numbers. A Vonage spokeswoman said her company agrees with APCO that E-911 should be provided over existing architecture, but Vonage is seeking an “interim solution” until access can be worked out -- “the use of the 10-digit numbers that the wireless industry used while they worked toward E-911.” She said: “In our view, some access to emergency services is better than nothing. Without an interim 10-digit solution, there is no safety net for customers.”

The FCC Wireline Bureau has been meeting with Bell company representatives this week to discuss how VoIP customers get E-911 service. FCC officials wouldn’t comment on the meetings, initiated by the agency amid a flurry of ex parte filings from industry parties. Bell representatives called the talks strictly informational, but heightened FCC interest stirred speculation the FCC might be poised to act on E-911 issues before completing the broader IP Enabled Services proceeding.

Congress is seeking a law that would create a regulatory class for Internet Protocol platforms. It would likely cover services such as VoIP, video over IP and standard broadband, whether delivered by cable providers, phone or power companies. The House will likely seek to keep these services mostly free of regulation, especially by the states. But it will probably try to ensure that VoIP meets public service obligations such as 911 and the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which would allow police to wiretap Internet phone calls.

While the FCC has many items on its agenda that could affect broadband delivery and service, it’s likely that nothing substantive will be resolved until the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the Brand X case. States could also play a factor in broadband delivery, though it seems their actions could have less potential impact, according to sources.

Vonage took another swipe at SBC for not cooperating in its plan to test VoIP-based E-911 service, telling FCC staff members in an April 6 meeting SBC is providing 911 access service to its own affiliate but not to Vonage. In an April 7 ex parte filing describing the meeting, Vonage said it is concerned “about the nature of any practice that would permit an incumbent provider to offer [911] access to its affiliate on a confidential and non-tariffed basis while restricting customers of other VoIP services from receiving the same level of access.” An SBC spokesman said “the 911 offering available to our affiliate is available to Vonage or any other VoIP provider under the same terms and conditions.” The affiliate buys SBC’s TipTop interconnection service for its VoIP offering and with that service gets access to the 911 offering, he said, adding that Vonage could do the same. In the ex parte filing, Vonage encouraged the FCC to issue a public statement on a related topic -- public access to administrative numbers used by PSAPs: “These numbers serve an important public safety function. The FCC should issue rules in the context of its IP Enabled rulemaking that prohibit PSAPs from intentionally disrupting or interfering with the ability of persons, irrespective of the communications method they may choose, from accessing these critical numbers.” Vonage said its testing program has gained “significant cooperation” from PSAPs in Wash., Tex. and N.Y. Despite a successful trial in King County, Wash., “Qwest has expressed an unwillingness to deploy the solution more widely,” Vonage said.

The “tricky thing” in providing enhanced 911 (E911) service to VoIP customers isn’t technology but rather access to emergency networks, Vonage Vp Chris Murray said at a panel Mon. sponsored by the National Press Club. Murray said Vonage is getting some Bells to cooperate for tests of Vonage’s VoIP-based E911 solution over their networks. Vonage has had a successful trial over Qwest’s network; Verizon is “way out front” on testing the system, he said. Vonage is working with Verizon on a “forward-looking solution” across N.Y.C., plus areas of N.Y. state and northern N.J., Murray said. BellSouth and SBC, which have voiced reservations about Vonage’s tests (CD March 31 p1), have shown willingness to talk about the project, he said: “They're at the table and we're talking.”