CompTel Maps Out 2001 Policy Goals

Enhancement and enforcement of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 are the primary objectives of the Competitive Telecommunications Association (www.comptel.org) for the coming year. CompTel is strategically readying itself and its competitive members for another tough year at the FCC (www.fcc.gov) and on Capitol Hill.

In a press conference yesterday at CompTel’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., H. Russell Frisby Jr., the association’s president, and his executive staff outlined the legislative and regulatory road ahead for competitive companies, citing the increased need to hold up the Telecom Act as a success.

“The concept of a level playing field has almost become a joke,” Frisby said yesterday, “but to our members it isn’t.”

To encourage Congress to enhance and enforce the act, CompTel plans to focus on three policy initiatives during 2001. The first is developing and encouraging national broadband policies that foster faster, more efficient deployment of broadband services, while opposing any new legislation that would give the Bell companies interLATA data relief without first opening up their local markets to competition.

And without that incentive to first open those markets, CompTel Assistant General Counsel Robert M. McDowell said that the Bells “would remonopolize and extend their monopoly to other services.”

Frisby noted that converging technologies also increase the danger of a “remonopolization” by the Bells as they seek to extend their reach into long distance and the Internet through new legislation.

Several such broadband-related bills were introduced last year but never made it to a vote. Some are expected to re-emerge again this year.

CompTel plans to mobilize its membership to lobby the new Congress on the need to enhance, not dilute, the Telecom Act, Frisby said.

In fact last November, CompTel launched a grassroots campaign to educate lawmakers on how the Telecom Act has benefited consumers by spurring innovation, deploying new technologies, and opening local markets to increased competition.

“We cannot afford to return to the days of monopoly telecommunications,” Frisby said at that time. “Today, approximately 300 companies are investing more than a billion dollars a month in infrastructure to bring new broadband and high-speed Internet access services to consumers and businesses around the country. Legislative proposals being promoted by the RBOCs … are not the solution for increasing competition in local markets.”

The second policy goal that CompTel noted yesterday involves non-discriminatory access to the Bells UNEs at forward-looking rates. Frisby called such access a critical entry strategy for competitors.

And to ensure against any backsliding once UNEs are truly accessible, CompTel promotes stricter enforcement actions. Specifically, Frisby says that the FCC should be given greater enforcement authority to impose stiffer fines for non-compliance. Higher penalties could go up to $1 million a day, he said.

The association’s executives also support empowering the FCC to immediately suspend a Bell company’s Section 271 approval to provide in-region long-distance service if that Bell is impeding a competitor’s ability to buy and provision service.

And there also should be a ban against any Bell joint marketing and provisioning of their CLEC “affiliates,” according to CompTel.

One possible solution might be for Congress to consider structural separation of the BOCs into wholesale and retail affiliates, basically splitting their local exchange service operations, Frisby says.

Frisby believes that policymakers must consider whether the Telecom Act's market-opening provisions and the rules to implement them are, by themselves, sufficient to open up markets quickly and whether they can prevent the stalling that hurts competitors both operationally and financially.

“The difficulty with enforcing the market-opening provisions of the '96 Telecommunications Act,” he says, “is that it is hard, if not impossible, to incent a monopolist to relinquish its monopoly. The alternative is structural separation.”

The third CompTel initiative involves reciprocal compensation specifically, and the larger intercarrier compensation issue generally.

The FCC is considering a three-year phase-out of reciprocal compensation for voice and ISP calls. Such intercarrier fees for local dial-up and local voice traffic would be phased out under a plan that the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau has presented to FCC Chairman William E. Kennard. The FCC now is finishing up its long-awaited order on reciprocal compensation.

CompTel supports a transition of at least five years, and “any solution at a minimum should be cost-based,” said Carol Ann Bischoff, the associations’ general counsel.

The U.S. Telecom Association (USTA) (www.usta.org), the Bells’ lobbyist, wants the FCC to use a bill-and-keep system instead of reciprocal compensation, and doesn’t want the issue left up to individual state regulatory bodies.

Meanwhile, the FCC’s Office of Plans and Policy in December released two working papers suggesting new ideas for overhauling the federal agency's intercarrier compensation regime.

CompTel and the Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS) (www.alts.org) hold a press briefing today at noon EST on the pending proposals to revise federal rules covering reciprocal compensation. For information on the briefing, contact Wayne Jackson, public relations counsel for ALTS, at 703-318-5486.

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