WASHINGTON-AirTouch Communications Inc. entered the interconnection-order fray by filing an emergency motion to modify the appeals-court stay of the order. The carrier believes some non-pricing issues essential to wireless carriers were put on hold by mistake.
The San Francisco-based company sought to have three sections of the Federal Communications Commission’s interconnection and local competition order that deal with commercial mobile radio services reinstated.
AirTouch claimed that the Omnibus Budget and Reconciliation Act of 1993 passed by Congress gave the FCC authority over all inter- and intrastate communications services performed by paging, cellular, personal communications services and other wireless operators. The act also pre-empted state regulatory authority over CMRS rates and entry.
When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit extended the temporary interconnection stay, AirTouch said it also “inadvertently” negated several CMRS-related subsections of the order in violation of guidelines adopted in 1993. FCC rules regarding CMRS interconnection state “the commission shall order a common carrier to establish physical connection with such a service” at just and reasonable rates.
AirTouch also pointed out that before the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was adopted, the FCC had ordered local carriers to pay CMRS carriers if calls were terminated on a CMRS network; however, “the record … established conclusively that the rule largely has been ignored by the LECs,” AirTouch wrote.
Data submitted by public utilities commissions proved current LEC-CMRS interconnection rates “are well in excess of costs, sometimes as high as 1,000 percent” above incremental costs. The FCC’s interconnection order, adopted in August, told CMRS entities with previously signed interconnection agreements to renegotiate those contracts if no provision for mutual compensation was included in the original; this mandate, according to AirTouch, has nothing to do with setting prices.
“The stay negates these actions and perpetuates the exorbitant rates and unfair practices currently imposed on CMRS providers, an environment which undercuts the incentive for some LECs to enter into meaningful negotiations,” AirTouch concluded.
