Smaller companies have little market power for interconnection...

Smaller companies have little market power for interconnection with larger networks or exchange of data controlled by larger content providers, NTCA said in an ex parte filing posted last week in dockets 05-337, 12-353 and 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1sKQXny). The lack of transparency in the markets can undermine their effectiveness and often appears to result in a paradigm where “biggest always wins with costs and transport burdens being pushed ‘downward’ onto smaller entities,” it said. Solving rural transport and interconnection cost issues through carefully constructed rules for traffic exchange and refined universal service support mechanisms “must be seen as an essential component of a 21st century broadband-focused universal service policy,” it said. The filing recounted a meeting with Matthew DelNero, Wireline Bureau deputy chief.