Apparently influenced by a Nov. 7 letter from the CEOs of Alcatel, Ericsson, Nokia, Philips and Siemens expressing grave concerns about the proposal, European officials late last week decided against sending draft European Commission (EC) legislation on patenting computer-implemented inventions to Competitiveness Council Ministers. The proposal sparked strong criticism from those who said it would permit American-style business method patents (BMPs) by allowing the patenting of pure software.
Country of origin cases
AT&T Gen. Counsel-Exec. Vp James Cicconi stressed to a Schwab Washington Research Group conference Wed. that there was a “compelling” case for changing the access charge regime. “Everybody has to recognize that this system is broken and has to be fixed,” he said, and “'04 should be the year.” Without naming MCI, but simply referring to the investigation of least-cost routing by a competitor, Cicconi said that probe underscored “the irrational business decisions being made based on access charges. This structure needs to change.” An order addressing requests for reconsideration of a 2-year-old CLEC access charge order is circulating on the 8th floor, addressing issues such as how much CLECs could charge long distance companies for access to customers and whether LECs can recover access charges from long distance companies for providing access for long distance calls that originated from or terminated on wireless networks. A group of carriers, including IXCs, ILECs and some facilities-based competitors have been meeting to try to reach agreement on a compensation method to recommend to the FCC (CD Dec 1 p6). “We are hopeful the industry can come together in some form of a consensus,” Cicconi said, adding that there were some “common views” among industry players on the issue. The hope would be to come to the FCC with a plan for the Commission to consider, he said. He said Bell companies had their entire cost recovery structure “premised on the continued existence and viability of the standalone long distance industry. That’s just not sustainable.” On voice-over-IP (VoIP), Cicconi warned that this new technology must be protected from being “subjugated by old regulatory models.” Terminating and switched access charges based on a copper-based network “that is going away” shouldn’t saddle 21st century technologies such as VoIP, he said. “Intercarrier compensation reform will fix this,” he said. “If we can’t get that done, we've got to find some other way of fixing it.”
How quickly the FCC acts on the long-pending intercarrier compensation proceeding will depend on the results of an industry effort to reach a consensus position on it, staffers for FCC Chmn. Powell and Comr. Abernathy told a conference Wed. “We desperately need to hear from that group soon,” Powell’s chief of staff, Christopher Libertelli, told an ALTS Business & Policy Conference in Washington.
USTA told the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., late Tues. that arguments the FCC made last week defending its intermodal local number portability (LNP) rules were without merit. USTA and CenturyTel asked the D.C. Circuit to stay the FCC’s wireline-to-wireless LNP rules, based on arguments that the Commission hadn’t followed the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirements for notice and that it had crafted rules that weren’t technologically neutral. “The FCC can maintain that its new rule does not mandate location portability only by arguing that its prior rules did not mean what they plainly said,” USTA told the court. The Commission previously defined location portability as enabling telecom users to maintain existing numbers when moving from one physical location to another, USTA said: “The FCC now argues, however, that ‘location portability refers to dissociating a telephone number from the rate center at which it originated.'” The group argued that that wasn’t in line with past definitions of “location portability” in FCC rules. USTA contended that the “balance of harm favors a stay… Because the intermodal portability rules were adopted pursuant to an unlawful procedure and favor wireless carriers, they will cause net customer losses that reflect not competition but wireless carriers’ unlawful regulatory advantage.” Noting that the FCC had indicated that demand for intermodal portability was likely to be limited initially, USTA said a stay wouldn’t carry a high likelihood of harm for mobile operators or consumers, “while forestalling irreparable harm the new rule will cause to wireline carriers.”
House Resources Committee Chmn. Pombo (R-Cal.) exhorted the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) to curb the expanded reach it had given to part of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), citing the impact on wireless towers. His concerns centered on ACHP rules that make federal agencies weigh the impact of an “undertaking” such as tower construction on historic properties. If the ACHP doesn’t address this, Pombo said: “Please know that we will not hesitate to take actions to restore Section 106 to the carefully defined scope originally intended by Congress.”
Mobile Satellite Ventures'(MSV) priority for 101 degrees W “is in doubt,” EchoStar told the FCC in opposition to MSV’s petition to dismiss EchoStar’s fixed satellite service application for the slot. MSV hasn’t asked to use the same spectrum EchoStar seeks and co-frequency sharing is feasible, EchoStar said: “MSV requests use of this spectrum for feeder links to and from a very limited number of geographical locations… [meaning] it should be possible for EchoStar ad MSV to coordinate co-frequency operations.” EchoStar said the Commission should ignore MSV claims that the proposed satellite shouldn’t have access to extended Ku-band frequencies because it wasn’t international. It said its satellite would be able to serve the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, P.R., V.I., Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean: “Should the bureau disagree that a system may qualify as ‘international’ if it provides a combination of international and domestic service, EchoStar would be forced to limit use of the satellite… to serving customers in Mexico, Canada and Latin America, while scrambling the programming from this satellite to make it inaccessible to U.S. customers.” EchoStar said it filed an amendment to the application adding spot beams to “dispel any remaining doubts about the international status of the system.” MSV had asked the Commission for a waiver of the proposed bond requirement because its application was for a replacement satellite (CD Nov 10 p15); EchoStar argued that that shouldn’t be granted, particularly because MSV asked for access to additional spectrum in its application: “Should the Commission deny MSV’s waiver request… MSV is free to turn this application into a genuine replacement satellite application by withdrawing its request for additional spectrum. But it should not be allowed to hold up this spectrum if it knows with certainty that it is not prepared to comply with the bond requirement.” MSV responded that while EchoStar argued correctly the Commission hadn’t grandfathered all pending applications from the bond requirement, “the Commission stated that the new bond requirement would apply to pending applications only if ‘doing so will help further the goals of this proceeding.'” EchoStar said the processing delay for MSV’s application was due to MSV’s 3 amendments, an argument that’s “misleading and inaccurate,” MSV said: “Over 2.5 years is a reasonable amount of time for the Bureau to grant an unopposed replacement application. Indeed as MSV noted in its letter, since MSV’s replacement application was originally filed, other replacement applications that requested new, ‘nonreplacement’ frequencies have been filed and granted without a bond requirement.”
The Mo. PSC called for comments by Dec. 12 on a staff recommendation to grant Time Warner Cable Information Services a certificate to provide local and long distance service via voice-over-IP technology. The staff said VoIP was a technology and not a service and was capable of providing telephony and information services. The staff acknowledged that certain regulatory requirements placed on local phone providers couldn’t be applied to the VoIP technology because there was no way to distinguish types of traffic or the origin of a call. The staff said VoIP providers could bring innovation and choice.
The failure of the launch of Japan’s 2nd Information Gathering Satellite (IGS) Nov. 29 probably was caused by a hot gas leak, an Arianespace spokeswoman said. The company has an alliance with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, manufacturer of the H-2A rocket that failed, and Boeing Launch Systems (CD July 31 p10). Arianespace said the gas burned electrical wires, which in turn caused failure of one of the solid rocket boosters to separate, confirming the original explanation. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said it attempted the launch from the Tanegashima Space Center and, when the launcher failed, JAXA destroyed the vehicle and the bird. An accident investigation team continues to investigate, the agency said.
FCC Chmn. Powell gave early indications of his thinking about a regulatory regime for Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) Mon., saying he saw consensus that the service might be deemed “interstate” in nature and that concerns about VoIP were focused on 4 or 5 discrete issues. His comments to reporters came after an FCC forum on VoIP that featured industry leaders, state public utility commissioners and others.
T-Mobile USA weighed in at the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., against a USTA request to stay the FCC’s wireline-to-wireless LNP rules. The Commission told the court last week that while USTA had argued that the agency had made changes in a rule without public notice, it simply had clarified a long- standing rule (CD Nov 28 p1). The USTA response brief is due today (Tues.). T-Mobile told the court that delaying the intermodal porting requirement would impose “significant additional burdens on wireless carriers that would have to sort port requests by technology and handle the increased confusion that customers will experience if they are unable to port their wireline number to the wireless carrier, or vice versa, after November 24, 2003.” The rule challenged by USTA directed wireline carriers to port numbers to wireless carriers whose coverage area overlapped the rate center in which the wireline number was assigned, as long as the mobile carrier kept the original rate center designation. USTA argued that the rules created a competitive imbalance between wireline and wireless carriers. T-Mobile said the FCC rules were technologically and competitively neutral. “The fact that certain carriers may be in a better position to compete for customers under the rule based on the technology they use to provide service (i.e., wireline or wireless) does not itself make the rule discriminatory,” T-Mobile said. Separately, Centennial Communications, which holds a PCS license in Puerto Rico, told the FCC it had been unable to process porting requests. Starting Nov. 24, Centennial said, it had experienced difficulty processing both incoming and outgoing porting requests. Centennial said it had contracted for preporting coordination services with a company named NightFire, although it told the FCC that 5 of the top 6 wireless carriers in the U.S. were using Telecommunication Services Inc. (TSI) for that service. “It has come to our attention that, at least in the Puerto Rico market, TSI is experiencing significant operational difficulties, which is resulting in Centennial being unable to process porting requests,” it told the FCC. “For significant portions of the day on Tuesday, TSI’s system was down, at which time porting requests could not be processed,” it said. Centennial asked the FCC to help resolve the issue.