More telecom industry groups urged the FCC to extend comment and ...

a similar one by Embarq, and extend the deadline for comments to Aug. 26 and replies to Sept. 5, they said in a motion for consolidation filed Friday. The petitioners are the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, National Exchange Carrier Association, Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and the Western Telecommunications Alliance. If the FCC doesn’t formally combine the proceedings, it should extend the comments deadline on the AT&T petition to Aug. 26, the day comments are due on Embarq’s request, and permit parties to file comments on both dockets simultaneously, the alliance said. AT&T and Embarq want a unified switched access rate, it said. Consolidation would let the FCC and interested parties “address efficiently and rationally the common issues of the petitions.” CompTel, which last week urged the FCC to extend deadlines on the AT&T petition to Aug. 28 for comments and Sept. 11 for replies (CD Aug 7 p12), told us Friday that it backs the new proposal. “We would support combining the two petitions and the proposed comment deadlines,” a spokeswoman said. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners also wants more time, it said, filing a motion late Friday. NARUC urged the FCC to extend the deadlines two weeks. “The AT&T proposal is troubling at several levels,” it said. “Many of NARUC’s members lack the staff resources to complete an analysis of the proposal, and get it through required State Commission approval procedures, in the time provided.”