WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday that rural wireless carriers cannot refuse to port a telephone number to another wireless carrier that does not have an interconnection agreement with them.
“The FCC held that wireless-to-wireless porting does not require the wireless carrier receiving the number to be directly interconnected with the wireless carrier that gives up the number or to have numbering resources in the rate center associated with the ported number. Although wireless carriers may voluntarily negotiate interconnection agreements with one another, such agreements are not required for wireless-to-wireless porting,” said the FCC. “In cases where wireless carriers cannot reach an agreement on the terms and conditions of porting, they must port numbers upon receipt of a valid request, with no conditions.”
Rural wireless carriers, which fear that nationwide players will steal customers, have said porting outside of a rate center is unacceptable. A rate center is a geographic area used in the wireline context to determine how much a customer should be charged for a call.
The wireless-to-wireless porting rules resolve some of the outstanding issues facing the wireless industry as it races toward a Nov. 24 deadline to implement wireless local number portability in the top-100 metropolitan service areas. The FCC said it would issue rules on wireline-to-wireless porting at a later date.
“With the deadline only 49 days away, the FCC still has not answered some basic implementation questions,” said Thomas Wheeler, president and chief executive officer of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. “The commission has simultaneously managed to tie the industry’s hands and hold our feet to the fire.”
Today’s guidance was necessary after most of the industry, including CTIA, rejected a letter from John Muleta, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, sent to John Scott, Verizon Wireless deputy general counsel, earlier this year.
The Muleta letter said the wireless bureau would not allow wireless carriers to impose out-porting restrictions on customers wishing to leave. In other words, a carrier cannot prevent a subscriber from churning, even if they have an outstanding balance. Wireline carriers are also forced to port customers regardless of whether they have outstanding balances.
“The FCC held that wireless customers who port their numbers should have the same flexibility to switch carriers that non-porting customers have currently, even if they have not settled their accounts with the old carriers. Thus, while wireless carriers may include and enforce credit requirements, early termination fees, and similar contractual provisions in their customer agreements, carriers may not refuse to port numbers upon receipt of a valid request from a customer’s new carrier,” said the commission.
While the wireless-to-wireless porting guidelines are important, the big issues for the industry are the rules regarding wireline-to-wireless porting.
In January, CTIA asked the FCC to delay WLNP implementation until the rules for wireline LNP can be changed to allow a consumer wishing to cut the cord to use a wireline number on a wireless phone. Wireline carriers are required to provide LNP only within a rate center. In other words, if a person moves from one side of a city to another, that person generally must change his telephone number. CTIA said that wireless carriers have a switch in approximately one out of every eight rate centers.
Wireline carriers believe that in the wireline-to wireless context, the wireline carrier is required to provide LNP only if the wireless carrier’s switch is located in the same rate center where the customer is located. According to CTIA research, this means that a majority of customers-87 percent-cannot keep their numbers when cutting the cord.
In contrast, wireless carriers are required to allow customers to keep their telephone numbers when switching carriers within the same local area.
It is unclear when the wireline-to-wireless rules will come out, and the wireline industry has suggested that the FCC cannot rule on this issue without going through a formal rulemaking process notwithstanding that comments and reply comments have been gathered on the CTIA request at least twice this year.
Despite the FCC’s action today, FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy warned consumers to not expect a rosy world come Nov. 24.
“There is no doubt that as wireless LNP is implemented, customers will benefit from the ability to port their numbers to whatever wireless or wireline service provider they choose,” said Abernathy. “Nonetheless, despite the best efforts of the FCC and the industry to ensure that WLNP is fully implemented, there is a potential for operational problems to arise, as can happen with the rollout of any new technology.”
