WASHINGTON-The Personal Communications Industry Association filed comments last week at the Federal Communications Commission seeking to halt any merger of SBC Communications Inc. and Southern New England Telecommunications Corp. until SBC stops charging paging carriers for SBC-originated traffic.
“When it comes to interconnection, SBC has chosen to thumb its nose at the FCC,” commented PCIA President Jay Kitchen in a written statement. “The FCC needs to take firm steps to force SBC into compliance. As long as SBC continues to violate the law, the commission must not grant the merger request.”
In its petition to deny or to defer action, submitted March 30, PCIA wrote that not only is SBC charging paging and other commercial mobile radio services for SBC-originated calls but it has not been compensating the wireless carriers for terminating traffic. That action violates congressional and FCC rulings regarding interconnection, PCIA stated.
“SBC’s longstanding abuse of its market dominance throughout the regions it serves should not go unaddressed by the commission as it determines whether SBC should be permitted to expand to yet another region of the country,” the association wrote. “Despite the clarity with which the commission has repeatedly spoken on this issue, SBC has failed to comply with its obligations. Recently, SBC attempted to justify its failure to follow [the rules] on the theory that it was charging paging providers for the use of facilities to transport telecommunications traffic, as opposed to charging for transporting the traffic itself. This theory was summarily rejected recently in a letter from the Common Carrier Bureau.”
PCIA also pointed out that SBC wrote to paging provider Metrocall Inc., which has not paid SBC for such facilities charges, to say that it disagreed with the commission’s rules and its letters regarding local transport, and that neither justified Metrocall’s refusal to pay.
SBC’s March 11 letter to Metrocall attorney Frederick Joyce, attached to the filing, said in part, “Your client’s refusal to pay amounts due and owing under these existing tariffs and contracts is unlawful and Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. [part of SBC] and Pacific Bell reserve the right to take any and all appropriate action in response.”
PCIA countered, “In the interest of promoting a healthy and truly competitive telecommunications market, the commission should make clear to SBC that it must comply with effective and duly promulgated laws and regulations, even when it `strongly disagrees.’ “
The public interest would not be served by the proposed merger, PCIA concluded, until SBC complies with standing interconnection rules. And even though these rules were reiterated in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, “SBC continues to insist on being paid by CMRS providers for traffic SBC originates … Surely the public interest in eradicating these unfair charges is no less important now that Congress has spoken, nor less urgent now that more than two years have passed without compliance,” it wrote.
