WASHINGTON-The Montana Public Service Commission last week said that 11 rural wireline carriers could delay intermodal local number portability to no later than Jan. 1, 2006, and Western Wireless Corp. must reimburse them for terminating calls to their customers until Western Wireless can reach individual interconnection agreements.
“To the best of my knowledge, these agreements are almost unique in the country in the way they propose to address the underlying costs of transporting this traffic,” said Montana PSC Chairman Bob Rowe. “For the companies involved, these arrangements resolve the specific issue of wireline-to-wireless number portability, and also begin to address long-standing economic and operational difficulties between wireline and wireless telecommunications companies. There is still lots of work to do, but the negotiations and agreements help lay the basis for ongoing commercial relationships between the companies, and that will be good for customers who increasingly use both wireless and wireline service.”
Small rural wireline carriers were given the option of obtaining a waiver from their state regulators if they could prove that intermodal porting would be too burdensome. Eleven Montana carriers asked for waivers but Western Wireless objected, leading to the negotiated settlement.
“To expeditiously implement LNP in certain rural areas, Western Wireless agreed to obtain confirmation from the FCC that telephone companies bear the costs of transporting wireline calls to ported telephone numbers, much like wireless carriers bear the costs of transporting wireless calls to ported telephone numbers,” said Gene DeJordy, vice president of regulatory affairs for Western Wireless.
Wireless carriers have argued that wireline carriers must port to them if they serve their area even if they do not have a switch in the subscriber’s rate center-a geographic distinction used by regulators to determine the cost of carrying a call. Additionally, wireless calls are considered local calls within each market-most of which are larger than the local wireline calling area, causing some carriers to refuse to deliver wireless calls to their customers.
Intermodal porting has proved to be the most complicated of the complex LNP scheme put in place in the wake of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, especially for rural areas because many rural carriers have not been subject to wireline competition. Rural carriers especially were caught off guard last year when the FCC instituted intermodal porting. The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telephone Companies are appealing the intermodal rules. Oral argument before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is scheduled for November.
Last week, The FCC proposed reducing the time it takes to port from wireline service to wireless from four days to just more than two days-from 96 hours to 53 hours.
The proposal seeks comment on a report submitted by the North American Numbering Council, an FCC advisory committee made up of representatives of all sectors of the telecommunications industry.
The NANC report indicates that it will take industry two years to comply with the new porting intervals after the FCC mandates a change. NANC made its recommendation in May. It generally takes about a year for a proposed rule to be mandated.
Wireless LNP is generally completed within hours, while the standard for wireline porting is four days. Customers who want to cut the cord are subject to the four-day standard.
The FCC is concerned that reducing the porting time could be a burden on rural wireline carriers, so it is seeking more information on the impact on these carriers, many of which only started receiving porting requests with the recent implementation of wireless LNP.
The NANC report notes that some rural wireless carriers have chosen the wireline timeframes to complete all ports.
More than 300,000 customers have cut the cord since May, with more than half-a-million customers switching totally to wireless since LNP became available last November, according to numbers recently made available by the FCC.
The total number for mobile-to-mobile switching increased from nearly 3.35 million at the end of April to 5.4 million at the end of July. The FCC got the numbers from NeuStar Inc., an independent contractor chosen by the FCC to facility LNP.
As of the end of July, 544,000 customers had cut the cord, compared with 229,300 as of April 30. All LNP numbers jumped from May to July, including those switching back to a wired world. At the end of April, a total of 7,200 had switched from mobile to landline service. This number grew to 9,000 by the end of July.
