Competitive local exchange carriers submitted another study on Qw...

and Phoenix. In the past two months, CLECs have submitted several studies opposing Qwest forbearance. Thursday, Qwest fought back with a 14-page letter to the FCC refuting the recent batch of CLEC studies. The CLECs “recommend several unwarranted changes in the Commission’s forbearance analysis,” Qwest said. The TDS Metrocom-commissioned study released Thursday accuses Qwest of “padding competitive market assessments” with its own resale and commercial offer lines. Those lines are “meaningless in any retail market analysis because they impose no price constraints on the incumbent and provide no meaningful commercial opportunity for competitors,” the CLECs said. The resale market peaked in 2000, serving less than 3 percent of the market, the CLECs said. Commercial offers, Bell-priced wholesale products, “have shown rapidly decaying volumes” since launching in late 2004, they said. Resale is competitively irrelevant because the reseller can’t differentiate a resold product, independently reduce prices or sell access services, they said. “Qwest has attempted to puff up its numbers in a variety of ways,” said Heather Gold, XO Communications external affairs senior vice president. “First they fobbed off ‘wireless substitution’ as competition to wireline service, which is completely erroneous. Now Qwest is adding in its own resale service, which is irrelevant. The only test of market share that matters is the proof of successful, facilities-based competition.”