Verizon Rhode Island Petition Shows Need for Forbearance Reform, Say Competitors
Competitive telcos acted in droves to oppose a Verizon petition seeking forbearance in Rhode Island from loop and transport unbundling requirements (CD Feb 29 p12). In four filings, CompTel and 29 CLECs urged that the FCC reject a Verizon petition they said reprised one the agency denied. “Verizon has demonstrated both its astonishing sense of entitlement and the fundamental flaws of the forbearance petition,” said One Communications, Time Warner Telecom, Integra and Cbeyond in a 202-page filing. Sprint Nextel, a longtime special access reform advocate, also opposed the petition. Comments were due Friday.
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Verizon presented “a subset of the same facts” used in a forbearance petition for Providence and five other metro statistical areas, said Covad, Nuvox and XO Communications. The FCC denied that petition in December (CD Dec 5 p1). The comment echoed a March motion by 30 CLECs to dismiss the Verizon petition (CD March 25 p8).
Verizon identifies Cox as a facilities-based competitor in the state, but doesn’t give the cable company’s market share or “demonstrate that Cox has captured a majority of the residential market,” CompTel said. Even if Cox is proven competitive enough, the FCC should deny forbearance because CLECs using Verizon facilities “may very well be driven from the market by the price hikes on wholesale inputs that will inevitably follow,” CompTel said.
The FCC “should adopt strengthened forbearance standards” to stop petitions like Verizon’s in Rhode Island, Cavalier, Paetec and 20 other CLECs said in a joint filing. The FCC should redefine facilities coverage, it said. Now, the rule says a CLEC has coverage if it’s “willing and able, within a commercially reasonable time, to offer the full range of services that are substitutes for the incumbent LEC’s local service offerings.” But the FCC should only count facilities ready to be used the day a forbearance petition is filed, the CLECs said.
The 22 competitors also urged the FCC to reject petitions that would create duopolies. The FCC should discount wholesale competition in describing the competitiveness of a market, conduct a forbearance analysis for each affected customer market and require “an actual, robustly competitive wholesale market in existence” when a petition is filed, the competitors said. Time Warner Telecom and three CLECs backed similar reforms in separate comments, saying that the FCC shouldn’t consider wireless a wireline substitute when measuring competition.
Sprint also opposed forbearance. Sprint and Verizon long have clashed on special access reform, with Sprint saying Verizon and other Bells control the market. “Carriers and customers continue to have limited competitive alternatives to Verizon’s enterprise and wholesale services, including special access,” Sprint said. “Verizon accounts for 97 percent of Sprint Nextel’s special access purchases for both its wireless and wireline networks in Rhode Island.” Verizon hasn’t provided competitive evidence to the contrary, it said.