WASHINGTON-CTIA told the Federal Communications Commission that the agency should focus on reforming the intercarrier-compensation system rather than attempting to snuff out so-called “phantom traffic.”
Phantom traffic is network activity that cannot be billed either because no one claims the traffic or the originator cannot be identified. The situation can eat into carriers’ bottom lines since network time and resources are being used but no one is getting paid.
CTIA wrote the FCC urging the commission to stay the course with intercarrier-compensation reform.
“The FCC should be wary of the unintended consequences of a phantom-traffic `remedy’ on the commission’s broader efforts to implement a unified intercarrier-compensation system,” said Paul Garnett, CTIA assistant vice president of regulatory affairs. “In addition, any `remedy’ should not require extensive investment or the expenditure of substantial resources to prop up the current antiquated and inefficient intercarrier-compensation system. It makes little sense, for example, to require carriers to make costly investment to enable last-generation equipment to make jurisdictional distinctions between categories of traffic while the FCC rightly is considering whether to eliminate all such jurisdictional distinctions.”
CTIA is a new face in the phantom-traffic debate. Until recently, rural local exchange carriers were the only ones complaining about phantom traffic, which they suspected was coming from the wireless industry. Since they couldn’t prove there was extra traffic, they couldn’t charge other carriers for it. Now the wireless industry is saying it is affected by the phenomenon, too.
“Although there may be instances in which certain carriers intentionally mislabel traffic to avoid compensation owed, CTIA is not aware of any wireless carrier that intentionally mislabels traffic,” said Garnett. “Similarly, there may be RLECs which intentionally misroute wireline-to-mobile intra-metropolitan trading area traffic to an interexchange carrier to improperly assess charges for this traffic. The FCC’s rules clearly state that intraMTA traffic originating or terminating on a commercial mobile radio service provider network is subject to reciprocal compensation rather than access charges.”
Later in the week, a coalition of rural wireline carriers said that one of their goals for intercarrier-compensation reform is that “all service providers must identify their traffic to discourage arbitrage and uncompensated phantom traffic.”
