WASHINGTON-As local number portability goes nationwide today, rural Americans who want to port their wireline phone numbers to wireless carriers may find the deadline is a bit elastic.
“Right now, there are still a lot of waivers pending so it is like waiting for a Polaroid picture to develop,” said Michael Altschul, general counsel and senior vice president of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.
Waivers were filed by rural local exchange carriers, which are also fighting the intermodal porting rules in court. Briefs in that case are due to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tomorrow with oral argument expected in the fall.
Although customers have had the ability to switch wireline carriers and keep their telephone number for many years, all carriers were not required to make necessary upgrades if competition did not exist, so many smaller wireline carriers never made the upgrades and were caught off guard when the FCC established the intermodal-porting mandate.
Intermodal porting in urban areas has not caused a big stir yet, with less than 5 percent of all porting being between wireline and wireless carriers. But intermodal porting may be more popular in rural America. A rural wireless carrier that began porting customers in November told reporters May 13 that 24 percent of its ports had come from wireline customers. Terry Addington, president of First Cellular of Southern Illinois, said that porting customers had complained about rising wireline bills and said the mobility of wireless service prompted them to make the change.
A number of regional operators that are expected to be most affected by the May 24 deadline said they are prepared for the mandate and have been able to glean some experience from operators involved in the Nov. 24 porting deadline for the top 100 metropolitan service areas.
“We’ve been lucky in that we have been able to lean on some of the national carriers that have had six months of number porting experience,” said Scott Bergs, vice president of regulatory affairs for Midwest Wireless. “We are at the point where we think we are prepared for all situations, but expect there will be some problems that will pop up at some time.”
Bergs said Midwest, which offers services in Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin, has conducted successful testing with a number of regional and nationwide wireless carriers, but that there has been little testing with regional wireline providers, which eventually could cause delays.
Other regional carriers reported similar confidence in wireless porting, adding the intermodal process could prove more challenging.
“We had our processes in place for the Nov. 24 deadline and don’t expect to make any changes for May 24,” said Julie Pigott, vice president of marketing for SouthernLinc. “We expect there will be some carriers both wireless and wireline that will not be ready, but don’t expect any difficulties with our system.”
Testing is critical, said Verizon Wireless, noting that its testing in rural America has been sparse. It has completed testing with only nine wireless carriers, and seven others are in progress. It has completed intermodal-porting testing with 15 wireline carriers with four in progress, said John Comisky, vice president of operations of Verizon Wireless.
Midwest’s Bergs said testing has been delayed because of the waivers. “We have not had as much testing success with wireline carriers, most of which are still waiting for or have already received waivers from the states,” Bergs said. “Minnesota and Iowa have granted some waivers on an interim basis, while some wireline providers in Wisconsin are expecting to have waivers granted, which is holding up testing.”
The 1996 telecom act allows small and rural wireline carriers to ask state regulators to waive competition-related rules. There is some disagreement about how much flexibility state regulators have. Rural LECs believe that state regulators can grant statewide waivers-as has been the case in some states like Utah-which granted a one-year waiver. The wireless industry believes state regulators should only grant company-specific waivers for company-specific issues.
Carol Mattey, deputy chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, said last week that no petitions had been filed asking the federal government to pre-empt state waivers, and CTIA’s Altschul confirmed that no petitions were being contemplated.
Even if a petition is filed, it is not likely to be granted, said Mattey. “The petition would have to demonstrate that the competitive LEC could not offer service. Since local number portability enhances their ability to compete, it would be very difficult to say they can’t compete because they have been competing for the last couple of years,” she said.
Notwithstanding the initial investment that may be necessary to route wireless calls to the proper carrier, rural LECs believe the waiver from intermodal porting obligations gives regulators and the courts time to decide on issues they believe were overlooked when intermodal porting rules were put in place Nov. 10.
“The FCC believes this is a clarification. We believe this is the direct opposite of what the FCC did for wireline-to-wireline porting,” said Jeffrey Smith, policy analyst for the Organization for the Promotion of Small Telephone Companies. “Our argument is how can you term requiring interconnection agreements in the wireline-to-wireline context and not requiring them in the intermodal context a mere clarification?”
Rural LECs also believe that intermodal porting is much ado about nothing. An informal survey conducted jointly by OPASTCO and the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association showed that their members that were required to be LNP-capable as of Nov. 24 have received few, if any, requests to port.
But if it is much ado about nothing in the implementation sense, it is very costly to comply with the LNP rules.
“The FCC’s rules allow for end-user cost recovery. The likely end-user charge is going to be high,” added Smith. “In Iowa it could be from 89 cents to more than $8 per month.”
RCR Wireless News Reporter Dan Meyer contributed to this report.
