Eighth floor lobbying is heating up over an AT&T forbearance requ...
Eighth floor lobbying is heating up over an AT&T forbearance request due for April 24 FCC review. AT&T seeks relief from cost-assignment rules requiring Bell companies to keep records that, among other tasks, separate interstate and intrastate costs (CD…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
April 9 p9). Wednesday to Friday, AT&T lawyers paid five visits to commissioner offices, including meetings with Commissioners Michael Copps and Deborah Tate, as well as with aides to Copps, Tate, and Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. Also Friday, the opposition united against AT&T in a rendezvous with Copps and aide Scott Deutchman. CompTel, NuVox, Covad, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, XO Communications and the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee sat in. Monday, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association entered the fray, opposing forbearance, according to an ex parte. Cost allocation rules from which AT&T seeks forbearance protect “rural consumers and rural incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), who depend on AT&T’s facilities to provide reasonably comparable services to their customers,” NTCA said. “Forbearance will cloud ILECs ability to negotiate rates, terms and conditions with AT&T” that are just, reasonable and non-discriminatory, it said.