Telecom industry urges intercarrier compensation reform: Group focuses on charges for IP-based traffic

The mobile phone industry and others in the telecom sector asked the Federal Communications Commission to overhaul regulations governing how service providers are compensated for carrying each other’s traffic.
“Now more than ever, it no longer make sense to perpetuate a system that requires or permits terminating carriers to apply different rates for different traffic based on arbitrary distinctions,” the industry coalition told the FCC in a letter “Comprehensive reform of the existing intercarrier compensation system is critical to accommodate progress and innovation, and to ensure technological and competitive neutrality.”
The group includes cellphone association CTIA, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp., Verizon Wireless, CompTIA, Global Crossing, the Information Technology Industry Council, National Association of Manufacturers, New Global Telecom, PointOne, the Telecommunications Industry Association and the VON Coalition.
In the letter, the coalition suggested the reform process should begin with clarifying “the regulatory requirements associated with the fastest growing segment of the communications industry – Internet Protocol-based technologies and services.” The telecom entities urged the FCC to issue two rulings clarify that all IP-based voice services, if regulated at all, are subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction, and to establish uniform compensation rules applicable to all traffic exchanged with or on the public switched telephone network.
The letter also recommended that new comprehensive rules “ultimately should result in uniform terminating rates for all carriers at a level below existing intercarrier compensation rates.” The filing suggested a rate no higher than .0007 cents per minute of use, the current rate for transport and termination of ISP-bound traffic, adding that a transition to these new rules “should allow for appropriate alternative recovery mechanisms, if needed.”