GENEVA -- U.S. and Asian manufacturers and others are pressing to update the 1997 World Trade Organization agreement on a range of telephony, Internet, broadcast and data gear. The WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA) has boosted deployment of telecom and information technology products, said Mark MacGann, director general of the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association. However, it doesn’t cover consumer electronics. Convergence of information technology with consumer electronics has made it out of date, MacGann said.
Tariff classification rulings
GENEVA -- A trade row is brewing over tariff treatment of telecom, IT and consumer electronic gear, as technological convergence destabilizes the trading system, officials said at a World Trade Organization symposium here on the Information Technology Agreement (ITA).
A special access provision included in the AT&T- BellSouth merger drew fire during the FCC’s visit to Capitol Hill Thurs. for the first hearing in the 110th Congress. Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. Inouye (D-Hawaii) asked Martin why he voted for the merger if he had qualms about the legality of the provision, referring to a statement Martin released after the merger. “If you felt so strongly, don’t you think you had an obligation to withhold your vote?”
Price caps remain the dominant form of retail rate regulation for large and mid-sized incumbent telcos in the U.S. They are employed by 38 states plus D.C., Communications Daily’s survey of state regulatory schemes showed. In the other states, regulation ranges from rate- of-return (ROR) to full retail rate deregulation. Regulators in 4 states and D.C. are considering new price regulation plans for their largest incumbents, while 2 other states are considering major modifications to existing regulatory regimes. Most small incumbents remain under rate of return regulation, while CLECs operate under minimal regulation across the country.
While disagreeing whether the FCC should grant Verizon’s petitions concerning regulatory treatment of its broadband services provided via fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), in comments to the Commission, telecom carriers agreed the Commission should focus on its broadband rulemaking proceedings, such as the wireline broadband and ILEC broadband NPRMs.
FCC Comr. Martin stuck to a script in a press breakfast Thurs., discussing the need for more action to encourage broadband buildout, but offering little guidance about the FCC’s next steps now that the FCC’s Triennial Review Order (TRO) has been overturned by the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C. Martin told reporters he couldn’t offer specifics about the FCC’s plans on the TRO issue. He repeated his Tues. statement that he and Comrs. Copps and Adelstein favored taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
AT&T strongly disputed the Bells’ arguments that it should retroactively pay access charges on its phone-to-phone VoIP traffic. “That is plainly wrong,” AT&T said in a filing with the FCC Fri.: “It is the Bells’ proposal that the Commission rewrite history -- and, in the process, send a clear message to investors and industry participants that this is a Commission that is more interested in the Bells’ pocket-books than in the public interest -- that would invite reversal by the court of appeals.” AT&T reiterated that: (1) The FCC had recognized in the Report to Congress that its tentative classification of phone-to-phone VoIP as a telecom service didn’t mean that such services were subject to access charges. To the contrary, it said, the Commission had “interpreted its access charges rules as not currently applying to [phone-to-phone] VoIP services” and “would decide in the future whether, due to changed circumstances, it could be appropriate, on a going forward basis, to impose charges ’similar’ to access charges.” (2) The FCC had “ample authority to construe its own rules not to require phone-to- phone VoIP providers to purchase termination out of access tariffs.” It said the Bells’ claim that the Report wasn’t issued in accordance with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act was “frivolous,” because it was issued after public notice and extensive comment: “In all events, the Report is best understood as simply an interpretation by the Commission of its own access charge rules… which the Commission was free to issue without engaging in notice and comment rulemaking.” (3) Even if the FCC decided to now apply access charges to phone-to-phone VoIP services, it was “not required to give that ruling retroactive effect and, indeed, would commit reversible error by doing so.” It argued that making VoIP subject to access charges wouldn’t be a new application of existing rules, but rather a “substitution of new law for old law that was reasonably clear.” It also said retroactivity was “improper even under a balancing test.” (4) “Neither the filed rate doctrine nor any duty to avoid interference with judicial proceedings justifies retroactive application of any decision to subject VoIP to access charges.” (5) Even if the FCC decided AT&T violated Commission rules by not buying termination for VoIP services out of access tariffs, it “could and should exercise its remedial discretion to waive any obligation to pay damages for those violations” because public interest would be better served by “maintaining the status quo for past periods.”
Attention turned in recent months in the 800 MHz proceeding to the question of how to value spectrum at 1.9 GHz under a rebanding proposal by Nextel and others, FCC Wireless Bureau Chief John Muleta said after the Commission’s Thurs. agenda meeting. But he said that didn’t mean the agency had zeroed in on the “consensus plan” to mitigate interference to public safety at 800 MHz. Other FCC officials acknowledged they faced budgetary belt-tightening in 2004 and said a must-carry decision might be a way off.