WASHINGTON-The wireline industry quickly ran to federal appeals court Friday morning after the Federal Communications Commission late Thursday turned down a request to delay wireless local number portability.
“In the past, the FCC repeatedly has expressed its commitment to portability rules that are efficient and fair, so they are not a source of competitive advantage for one platform or another. By rushing out a one-sided rule that encourages only landline-to-wireless transfers, that promise was broken. USTA is working to ensure consumers have a real choice and local telecoms have the opportunity to compete rather than rules that simply tell them they can’t,” said Walter B. McCormick Jr., president and chief executive officer of the United States Telecom Association.
The wireless industry cried foul.
“Allowing this desperate attempt at delay will only confuse consumers and serve to limit competition. We hope the courts will side with consumers and deny the landline companies’ anti-competitive, anti-consumer request for a stay,” said Steve Largent, president and chief executive officer of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. “On at least five separate occasions, the FCC has made absolutely clear that it was ordering wireless number portability for the twin purposes of promoting competition among wireless carriers and between the wireless and wireline industries.”
The FCC adhered to USTA’s demand that it rule by Thursday whether it was going to delay wireline-to-wireless porting until it figures out how to make it possible for most people to port from wireless to wireline.
“We continue to believe that our actions contained in the Intermodal LNP Order are lawful and supported by the record. The showings made by USTA are repetitive of matters specifically considered and rejected by the FCC,” said the commission. “Intermodal number porting is a two-way obligation. Indeed, wireline carriers can port in some wireless numbers today. Moreover, a wireline carrier may compete to win back a customer who ported his home telephone number to a wireless carrier, provided that customer has remained at the same location. While there are circumstances under which a wireless carrier need not port a number to a requesting wireline carrier (i.e. where the wireless carrier seeks to port a number to a wireline telephone falling in a different rate center), the FCC has sought comment on how to facilitate wireless-to-wireline porting.”
USTA’s emergency stay request came one week after four rural wireline carriers also asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for an emergency stay.
The rural arguments are slightly different, focusing instead on routing a call from the rural carrier’s rate center-geographic distinctions used by state regulators and landline phone companies to determine how much to charge for carrying a call-to a rate center of a different company. Currently, a long-distance carrier must connect calls that leave the rural telco’s rate center to the other end, and the customer is charged for the call. But the FCC said that if the ported number is calling a telephone number in the rate center of its original carrier, it must be considered a local call.
The D.C. Circuit has reportedly requested a quick briefing schedule leading some to believe a ruling could come this weekend.
But if all of that fails, some states have granted some rural wireline carriers limited relief.
WSIS-TV Channel 10 of Columbia, S.C., reported that South Carolina regulators have halted the rules for customers in Columbia and Charleston, S.C.
The Telecommunications Act allows state regulators to stall federal rules from being enforced for no more than six months for carriers that service less than 2 percent of the access lines while state regulators consider the telcos’ arguments.
