FCC Bureau Chief Moves at Warp Speed

As chief of the Common Carrier Bureau (CCB), Lawrence E. Strickling is at the forefront of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) efforts to break the broadband speed limit, improve enforcement and ad-vance local exchange competition. Since joining the FCC in September 1997--armed with a Harvard law degree and years of public policy experience at Ameritech Corp.--Strickling's been in constant forward motion.

He says the CCB has a lot on its plate this summer--industry mergers, internal reorganization, incumbent local exchange carriers (ILEC) in-region long distance applications, advanced services and a new list of unbundled network elements (UNEs), to name a few. Most nights Strickling says he can't respond to voice mail messages until after 9 p.m. X-CHANGE Washington Bureau Chief Kim Sunderland caught up with Strickling recently and grilled him on some of telecom's hottest regulatory topics.

X: Enforcement by the FCC is being attacked by competitors, who say it isn't happening at the FCC. What's the story?

Strickling: In general, with enforcement what we've tried to look at are our speed with dealing with disputes and, secondly, what I call behavior modification, which is having a process that will change the behavior of not just senior management, but also of people throughout a company. Generally it is the case ... at large organizations ... you may have senior management absolutely in sync with what needs to be done, but sometimes there are problems translating that to middle and lower-level employees. The primary way we got at that was by creating the Rocket Docket last summer. [It] addresses both those goals, first by providing a 60-day period of time in which to adjudicate a dispute and secondly by bringing back the prospect of actual testimony of employees that are involved in the behavior that is the subject of the dispute. It's a way to bring home to employees that their behavior has consequences because they may have to come into Washington and testify in a hearing. Up to now ... all the complaint cases here in the [CCB] have been done largely on paper records by lawyers and lobbyists so the actual employees have always been insulated from the process. But as soon as you bring back the possibility of discovery and testimony ... they have to now be concerned about the consequences of their actions in a way they never had to when there was always someone in Washington to take care of things.

X: How is the commission ensuring Telecom Act compliance?

Strickling: We can assess forfeitures, is what they're called here, which basically are fines against parties for violating the Communications Act. Just as we have fines for slamming, we can assess fines for violations of the Act. Right now the best enforcement tool for the Telecom Act itself is the [Section] 271 process, where you get the opportunity to really see what a company has been doing and assess whether ... it's in compliance. And as you know, no one has actually gotten through the process yet. But I think we understand that can't be the only tool you use because some companies haven't filed a 271 application yet. Remember US West [Communications Inc.] has not filed one although they are very interested in the process and ... in understanding what they have to do to be in compliance. We've got to augment our enforcement and investigation capabilities to deal with [Section] 251 issues independent of having them presented to us in the context of 271. Eventually we've got to ... do our own investigations. But both skill wise and resource wise, that's going to take us some time to develop. We plan to detail some of our auditors on to the next batches of 271 applications to get them trained on the interconnection issue so they can then develop an auditing program for 251.

X: How do you see the UNE [unbundled network element] remand ending up?

Strickling: I just can't answer that at this early stage. We just started getting comments in [the week of May 28] on it. As I view the challenges in front of us, we have to come up with a meaningful standard for 'necessary' and 'impair.' Then we will apply it to the elements that have already been identified as needed to be unbundled. And in our notice we also ask about some additional elements that some states have already declared to be [UNEs] but that this commission hasn't done, such as dark fiber, subloop unbundling and things like that.

X: When do you think that will get wrapped up?

Strickling: We would hope to resolve it by the end of the summer, which means September.

X: What's the status of the Section 706 advanced services proceeding?

Strickling: With the Supreme Court remand we pretty much have to wait to see how that plays out. We did go ahead and do collocation. One of the other issues we have that we can perhaps move on before September is the question of limited LATA (local access transport area) boundary modifications where necessary to connect specific facilities. This was really an issue for the RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies). That's an issue where I think we could provide some guidance in terms of what kinds of applications we think might be appropriate and how we would handle them. And I think we will recommend to the commission that they act on that before September.

A lot of it really is hooked into September because the big issue for the regional Bell companies was ... 'Do we have to unbundle DSLAM (digital subscriber line access multiplexer) technology? Do we have to unbundle our packet switching network if we integrate it into our existing incumbent LEC?'

We had proposed a separate subsidiary as an alternative for them as a way they could go forward and invest in that equipment, and basically go forward on an unregulated basis for that equipment while at the same time bolstering access to loops for themselves and for everybody. At this point there isn't a lot of interest among the RBOC community for this separate affiliate if they think they can, through our remand on the UNEs, come to a conclusion that packet switching and DSLAMs don't have to be unbundled. And I'm not prejudging or guessing which way we'll come out on that except to say that the RBOCs are going to wait and see what we do there before they push on the separate affiliate as an option.

The separate affiliate, by the way, has been a totally misunderstood option. I've heard people on both sides of the debate castigate this. On the one side you'll hear interexchange carriers (IXCs) and some of the competitive LECs (CLECs) say it's giving away the store to the incumbent LECs. At the same time, RBOCs feel like we're imposing new regulations on them. And my answer is, 'You're both wrong.' There really was an option that would allow the incumbent LECs to proceed on an unregulated basis but what they had to do was ... accept the fact that they should get their loops and get their collocation for this affiliate the same way that everybody else does. It didn't ever seem to us to be such a big thing to be asking for because they would, at the end of the day, have an affiliate that would be offering services on a deregulated basis. To those people who felt that we were giving away the store, again it wasn't the case because it was really forcing the incumbent to set up an affiliate that was going to have to operate in the marketplace the same way that everybody else did. It struck us as a fair and very deregulatory approach to this but we had a hard time convincing either side of the debate.

X: Which issues ... really turn you on?

Strickling: I'm going to give you two answers. The chairman has laid out the three things that he wants, which are competition, community and common sense. The community part really focuses on universal service, dealing with communities such as the Indian reservations and the disabled. And common sense ... I refer to it as two things: it's deregulating where we can and it's avoiding the looming train wrecks. We've got to understand where the big problems are going to be down the road and start getting in front of them. Those are the things that really matter to me.

Having said that, my second answer would be that I really think the focus constantly has got to come back to competition. Because if we have any hope of achieving an environment where people are able to come and be entrepreneurs, take risks, really innovate, we need an environment that gets a lot of people attracted to that. It's not going to happen if this turns into a cable/RBOC "duoopoly" because then you're relying on two people to do it. And with the way technology is developing ... I really think it's important to have a system here that attracts people to bring their own capital to this. Unless you have a system that attracts those people in to do it, I don't think we'll ever achieve all the benefits that people expected from the Telecom Act.

The thing I really like working on here are the competition issues, but they're all important. Whatever's on the chairman's agenda is important to me!

X: If you could say one thing to the CLECs, what would it be?

Strickling: It's hard just coming up with one thing. The fact that we have entrepreneurs trying to do this is so important and so incredible I just want to encourage them in every way to keep up what they're doing and to come to us when they're having problems getting what is due them under the Telecom Act. It's very important to this country that we have a multiplicity of providers offering lots of new and different services. Keep it up.

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