WASHINGTON-The U.S. Supreme Court has closed the book on any further appeal to vacate a stay of certain interconnection and local competition rules adopted last August by the Federal Communications Commission. The court last week denied for the second time a petition for such action filed by the commission, AT&T Corp. and MCI Corp.
The nine justices met Nov. 7 to discuss the issue; their decision to deny was released Nov. 11 without any written statement.
FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, who had admitted during a press briefing prior to the announcement that an affirmative Supreme Court ruling would be “a long shot,” commented in a written statement, “The states have won a major jurisdictional victory, and I congratulate them. For all practical purposes, the states have complete control of the prices new entrants will pay to share the existing telephone networks during the critical period when competition is supposed to begin in local telephone markets.” Perhaps trying to smooth the situation over, Hundt concluded, “The important goal for the FCC now is to find new ways to work with the states as they each adopt a competition policy through rules and interconnection agreements.”
While disappointed in the Supreme Court’s judgment, FCC advocate AT&T continues to back the interconnection order. “We continue to believe that the pricing methodologies that formed the basis of the FCC’s interconnection rules are grounded in sound logic and accurately follow the intent of the telecom act,” said Mark Rosenblum, vice president/law and public policy. “For that reason, we will continue to defend the FCC’s rules before the Court of Appeals and will press for adoption of forward-looking, cost-based pricing models in other jurisdictions, such as state public utility commission proceedings. Pursuit of the goal of effective local telephone competition dictates that we do so.”
The commission, its proponents and opponents now are preparing for Jan. 17, when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis will hear arguments for and against the FCC’s proposed interconnection pricing standards, currently stayed by that court. A final ruling could be handed down in February or March.
Some participants in the case have had difficulty filing their briefs with the Eighth Circuit Court on time. On Nov. 5, Bell Atlantic Corp., BellSouth Corp., Pacific Telesis Group, SBC Communications Inc., U S West Inc. and GTE Service Corp. petitioned for an additional six days to file their opening briefs with the court. The court ruled Nov. 6 to allow the Nov. 12 deadline to be moved to Nov. 18; this move in turn shortened the response filing time by six days.
As a result, the Competitive Telecommunications Association filed for the same six-day opening-briefs extension, and 36 interveners for the FCC-a group that includes several wireless interests-filed for the response time to be extended from Dec. 16 to Dec. 22. CompTel contended that local exchange carriers would be able to alter their opening briefs upon reading those by proponents of the interconnection pricing plan if the dates weren’t changed. The interveners wrote they could not possibly digest all the filings, coordinate with the FCC on its response and then formulate a consolidated intervener response in just 28 days that include the Thanksgiving holiday. Both requests were granted.
Along with an extended filing schedule, Bell operating companies also got a boost from the Supreme Court’s decision to maintain the Eighth Circuit’s stay. GTE Corp., which has taken somewhat of a lead in this case, said, “We expect to prevail on the merits of our argument that the states, not the FCC, have jurisdiction over pricing. We are also challenging a broad range of other defects in the FCC’s rules, and we expect to prevail on those challenges as well.”
