Ad Hoc Business Group Asks FCC to Revisit ILEC 'Nondominant' Access Relief
A group of business customers asked the FCC to reconsider the relief it gave ILECs in granting USTelecom's petition for nondominant treatment of incumbent telco interstate switched access services connecting local callers to long-distance networks. The FCC reclassified the ILECs…
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as nondominant "despite its failure to finalize access rate regulations for toll-free originating access minutes," said the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee in a petition posted Tuesday in docket 13-3. To justify the relief, the commission partially relied on the continuing applicability of regulatory protections for terminating access rates, said the group. "But the Commission has yet to act on its long-standing proposal to apply those same rate protections to originating access for toll-free service. The Commission must either (1) reconsider its decision to declare ILECs non-dominant or (2) act on its proposal to apply the same regulatory protections to the 'open' end of a toll-free call as apply to terminating 'sent paid' service." As the FCC noted on intercarrier compensation, "the 'open' or originating end of a toll-free call is the equivalent of the terminating end of a 'sent paid' call," the group said. Because in both cases the access-paying customer has no control over the choice of access provider at one end of the call, the providers of both forms of access are insulated from competitive forces and should be regulated to protect consumers, it said.