CLECs opposed a CenturyLink petition for forbearance of...

CLECs opposed a CenturyLink petition for forbearance of dominant carrier and Computer Inquiry tariffing requirements on enterprise broadband services. In comments filed Thursday in WC docket 14-9, the competitive providers said CenturyLink’s petition only confirmed the importance of wholesale last-mile access policies to provide choice for business consumers. The telco had sought forbearance from dominant carrier regulation of packet-based special access services offered by legacy CenturyTel and legacy Embarq. It’s the second time in a year CenturyLink has asked for such forbearance, and the commission “must put a stop to this wasteful gamesmanship,” said tw telecom, Level 3, Integra, EarthLink and Cbeyond (http://bit.ly/1cmV0fO). The competitive providers urged the commission to use the “traditional market power framework” to evaluate CenturyLink’s petition. Under that framework, or any other “reasonable standard,” the ILEC has failed to demonstrate sufficient competition in the relevant markets to justify forbearance, they said. The correct policy response to CenturyLink’s petition is to reform last-mile access policies for all providers, Comptel said (http://bit.ly/1cmXfjp). Commission forbearance grants have generally put “next generation competition at risk,” the association of CLECs said. Reforming last-mile access will promote investment, and CenturyLink’s claim that no advantages come from “incumbency in fiber deployment” is false, Comptel said. Sprint also opposed the petition. “Nothing has changed since the last time CenturyLink requested forbearance,” the carrier said (http://bit.ly/1cmXQSb). “It retains market power in the provision of enterprise broadband services because of its control of critical last-mile facilities in its service areas, and it has failed to demonstrate that its requested relief is justified.” CenturyLink had asked to be treated like other major providers of enterprise broadband service, which it said are uniformly regulated as nondominant. The widely varying regulation that applies to CenturyLink services undermines its ability to compete, the ILEC said in its December petition: “About the worst mistake a regulatory agency can make is to treat similarly situated competitors unequally” (http://bit.ly/1cnb01r).