McDowell Troubled by Lack of Granular Special Access Data
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell remains the swing vote as he and colleagues debate whether to revise special access pricing rules. McDowell hasn’t made a decision and is still examining the need for revised rules, it was learned.
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Chairman Kevin Martin reiterated Wednesday that he does not believe changes are needed and that he’s waiting to hear from fellow commissioners on an option memo he circulated in August (CD Oct 11 p7). A decision on special access and whether McDowell will join with commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein to oppose Martin has stalled partly because the FCC was concentrating on an order addressing AT&T’s broadband forbearance petition, expected after our deadline Thursday.
At least two points seem especially troubling to McDowell, sources said. The first is a lack of detailed material on which to base a decision. Though the Department of Justice has intricate building-by-building maps of where competitive local exchange carriers and the Bells have loops, they are not available to commissioners as they examine special access pricing, sources said.
Another complication is that wireless carriers have not presented a united front. Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile are lined up against AT&T and Verizon Wireless. McDowell seems reluctant to embrace an interim solution, as some industry groups propose; he would prefer a permanent answer.
“He’s the deciding vote,” an attorney representing competitors seeking change said Thursday. “There’s a lot of evidence that shows that the FCC’s judgment that rates would be competitive has failed and the FCC needs to do something about it.” The wireless carriers disagree, but competitors strongly concur, the source said.
“There certainly is uniformity in terms of the need for reform,” the source said. “Everyone agrees on the competitive side that the rules are not working… There’s not as much as uniformity as to what the remedy should be.” He added, “There’s going to have to be some push from McDowell and the Democrats to get this on the radar screen.”
“The data shows very clearly that there is a market failure in the special access market,” a Sprint Nextel spokesman said. “The question is no longer, ‘Is there is a problem in the special access market?’ The question is, ‘What is the commission prepared to do to solve the problem?'”
AT&T, on other hand, has claimed in various filings that the FCC needs no more details. In August, AT&T said that the commission already had decided analysis based on geographic areas smaller than metropolitan service areas is not worth the “increased expenses and administrative burdens.”
The record is clear, AT&T said this week in a filing. “Those that complain about special access prices have neither attempted to rebut these showings nor bothered to put in any of their own evidence of the trends in the prices they pay,” AT&T said. “Proponents of special access re-regulation do not refute these showings with facts of their own. To the contrary, they have gone out of their way to conceal the relevant facts within their control.”