WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission, growing increasingly concerned about whether proposed wireless-wireline interconnection rules could withstand legal scrutiny, appears ready to change course and address the matter within the context of a broader interconnection rulemaking mandated by the new telecommunications law.
The FCC, according to sources, is not being won over by wireless industry arguments that 1993 legislation supports a reciprocal termination plan to govern interconnection compensation between commercial mobile service providers and local exchange carriers.
Still, agency officials continue to study the issue and are looking at several options. A decision is expected at the Aug. 1 meeting. If the FCC rolls the CMRS-LEC issue into the large interconnection proceeding, it would be a major setback for the wireless telecommunications industry.
The industry, arguing the current three-cents-per-minute LEC interconnection charges will prevent cellular and personal communications services providers from being competitive with local telephone companies, won a big victory last December when the FCC proposed a scheme under which commercial wireless carriers and LECs terminate each other’s traffic for free and keep revenue from traffic each generates.
Since December, two factors have conspired to put the reciprocal termination, or bill-and-keep, plan in doubt: the telecommunications reform bill and the United States Telephone Association.
The new telecommunications bill signed into law in February calls for telecommunications carriers to negotiate interconnection arrangements with LECs, leaving to states the job of arbitrating disputes.
USTA, which speaks for the seven regional Bell telephone companies and other local telcos, argues that CMRS-LEC interconnection should be subject to the parameters of the 1996 Telecommunications Act rather than to a separate regulatory regime.
While there is support within the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau for the CMRS-LEC interconnection plan, the measure appears to lack votes among the five commissioners.
Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) asked FCC Chairman Reed Hundt at last week’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing whether the agency skewed the issue by treating wireless interconnection as a separate matter.
“The procedural decision [to consider CMRS-LEC interconnection separately] shouldn’t generate a substantive result,” said Hundt.
But the regional Bells believe it will; that position seems to be winning out.
Moreover, according to FCC staffers and industry lobbyists, agency lawyers are worried that CMRS-LEC reciprocal termination plan, if adopted, will not hold up in court. The wireless industry says it would.
The issue is not likely to go away. If, for example, a wireless carrier serving a wide-area encompassing multiple states cannot reach satisfactory interconnection agreements in each state, the system buildout could suffer.
