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.
Country of origin cases
A long-awaited order dealing with requests for reconsideration of the FCC’s 2-year-old CLEC access charge order is circulating on the 8th floor to gain input and votes by the commissioners, sources said. A variety of petitions have been filed for reconsideration of the order, which placed limits on how much CLECs could charge long distance companies for access to customers. The agency is expected to tackle one of them in particular, a controversial request by U.S. LEC for clarification on 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. It wasn’t known what other issues might be included in the order but among pending reconsideration petitions were those that: (1) Seek exceptions to the benchmarks the FCC set for CLEC charges. (2) Raise issues that affect rural carriers. The CLEC access charge issue is related to the FCC’s larger proceeding to reform several types of intercarrier compensation. A group of carriers, including long distance, incumbent LECs and several facilities-based CLECs, have been meeting since late spring to try to agree on a compensation method to recommend to the FCC. The groups, which have not yet reached a recommendation, recently agreed to continue meeting, which an FCC source said was a good sign. Several FCC staffers said they considered it important for the industry to agree on a proposal. “We're hopeful the coalition will come up with ideas,” said a staffer. “It’s always useful to us when parties get together” to seek agreement, the source said. The FCC has proposed a bill-&-keep method of compensation and an industry source said the goal was to make sure bill-&-keep was “done properly without hardship” to any industry segment. The industry source said the group had spent months hearing each other’s problems, which he viewed as positive because it could lead to a solution “less harmful to each party.”
In the first telecom decision of its kind since the Basic Telecom Agreement of 1997, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in favor of U.S. long distance carriers in their dispute with Mexico’s Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex), a U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) official confirmed Wed. The WTO late last week issued a preliminary decision requiring Telmex to reduce the rates it charges U.S. carriers to connect incoming calls.
Showtime said it would present a live Webcast of its roundtable forum discussion on The Reagans. The roundtable Controversy: The Reagans will be simulcast on SHO.COM. This will be the first time that a Showtime program, other than boxing, has been simulcast live on the Website. The Reagans, originally a CBS miniseries, was picked up by Showtime after CBS decided the film wasn’t appropriate for broadcast TV as being unbalanced.
Congress took a step Tues. toward putting the media ownership issue to rest. In a compromise between the White House and congressional Republicans, officials said, the omnibus appropriations bill would establish a permanent 39% broadcast ownership cap -- sidestepping a veto threat, weakening the court challenge to the cap, eliminating questions of waivers and divestiture and making further legislation on the ownership cap unnecessary.
The U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., Tues. dismissed challenges by AT&T and Sprint PCS to an FCC order involving the right of wireless carriers to levy access charges on long distance companies (CD Oct 27 p10). Although the case touched on a significant intercarrier compensation issue, the court’s decision focused on whether the issue was ripe and whether some of the arguments were pertinent to the FCC’s order. Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg and Judges Harry Edwards and Merrick Garland concluded: “Both AT&T and Sprint raise numerous challenges to the Commission’s ruling, none of which are properly before the court for review… We deny both petitions because neither AT&T’s nor Sprint’s claims are ripe for consideration by this court.” The dispute originated in 1998 after Sprint PCS started billing AT&T for the costs of terminating long distance traffic bound for its customers. AT&T refused to pay and Sprint filed suit in state court in Mo. The case moved to the U.S. Dist. Court, Kansas City, which sought input from the FCC on whether Sprint could charge access fees to AT&T and, if so, the reasonableness of Sprint’s fees. The FCC responded that Sprint PCS was entitled to collect access charges only if there were a contract imposing a payment obligation on AT&T. The agency said there was no written contract in this case but the District Court could decide if there were an implied contract. Until that’s done, it’s premature to decide the 2nd question on the reasonableness of the rates, the FCC order said. AT&T and Sprint PCS both challenged the Commission decision but the appeals court agreed with the agency that their key arguments were not ripe or appropriate for court action: (1) AT&T’s claim that the FCC gave improper authority to the state court by requiring it to set a price for access charges. (2) Sprint’s contention that the FCC should have required AT&T to pay access charges. On the Sprint complaint, the court added that the FCC’s regulation of access charges was the subject of a proposed rulemaking: “We decline to interfere with those proceedings… The basic rationale for the ripeness doctrine is to prevent courts ‘from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over administrative policies.'”
Two bills introduced consecutively last weekend in the Senate together would strengthen copyright law, give content providers more flexibility in marketing their products in digital format online and make it easier to convict someone for camcording a movie or distributing a prerelease movie or album online. One was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chmn. Hatch (R-Utah) and the other listed him as an original co-sponsor. Hatch is expected to hold a hearing on both bills early next year.
The U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., turned down a request by rural carriers for a stay on wireless-to-wireless local number portability (LNP) rules in a decision late Fri., but set a briefing schedule for an 11th-hour challenge by USTA on a wireline-to-wireless LNP order. Wireless LNP is to take effect today (Mon.) in the top 100 markets. USTA and CenturyTel had filed an emergency motion for a stay at the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., Fri., seeking to forestall the FCC’s wireline-to-wireless LNP rules. CTIA warned that if the request were honored, millions of wireline customers wouldn’t be able to transfer numbers to mobile phones.
Senators opposed to an Internet tax moratorium bill dug in their heels Thurs., offering to negotiate on the length of a temporary extension but unwilling to budge beyond their compromise on tax exemptions. Sen. Voinovich (R-O.) told a Hill news conference that opponents of S-150 by Sen. Allen (R-Va.) had agreed to give up grandfathered taxes after 2 years but insisted on being able to tax the Internet backbone. The language proposed by Allen and Sen. Wyden (D- Ore.) would cost the states too much money, he predicted: “If Congress wants to give a big $8-billion-a-year tax break to the telecommunications industry, then Congress should pay for it and not send the bill to the states.”
Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. McCain (R-Ariz.) and FCC Chmn. Powell, touting wireless local number portability (LNP), cast doubts Wed. on the prospects that any last-min. challenges would derail the Mon. deadline. USTA and CenturyTel petitioned the FCC late Tues. to stay new wireline-to-wireless LNP rules, saying if it didn’t act on the request by Nov. 20, they would seek relief in the courts. Separately, telemarketers were raising new concerns at the FCC on how to implement marketing restrictions for some ported wireless numbers.