Commissioners Completing Number-Porting Order, Further Notice
The FCC is finishing up changes in an order reducing the time limit for wireline and intermodal ports to two business days, commission officials told us Thursday. The FCC is also considering a further-rulemaking notice asking whether to cut the interval further, officials said Thursday. But the commissioners seem to disagree about whether the FCC needs to issue a rulemaking notice or should just impose a 24-hour time limit. Another point of contention could be the handling of so-called simple ports, a term that some say hasn’t been defined. The commissioners are scheduled to vote on the porting item at Wednesday’s meeting.
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The commissioners have spent a good deal of time on the porting order in recent days. “There’s only one big item that we're doing,” an FCC official said. Several issues remain to be resolved before the vote, a commission official said. There’s a question about the order’s imposing requirements that could change after a further notice, because carriers might have to retool their systems twice. Another question is whether the FCC should give smaller carriers a longer porting interval. If it does, the official said, the commission would have to decide where to draw the line for getting the additional time.
The commission might reduce the time only for simple ports, said an FCC official on the eighth floor. If it does, the notice probably would ask whether to reduce the interval for other ports, the official said. But another commission official said there has been no discussion on limiting the scope of the order. Eighth-floor discussion of the definition of simple ports has been in the context of the further notice, the official said. Asked to respond, the first FCC official repeated that a simple port limit is being considered, but described the matter as “up in the air.”
But multiple FCC officials have described eighth-floor discussions as collegial. The commissioners probably won’t be arguing about the language long into Tuesday night, said the eighth floor official.
Meanwhile, carriers fought over the question of simple ports and other details of the order through Wednesday, the last day to meet with commission officials under sunshine rules. The definition of simple port should exclude ports involving resellers, XO Communications said in a letter Wednesday to the FCC. “The involvement of an unaffiliated reseller, or any other entity that maintains the relationship with the end user of the telephone numbering being ported, complicates the porting process and frequently requires additional communications between the relevant parties that can slow the porting process,” the competitive local carrier said.
But AT&T asked the FCC to reject the reseller argument, as well as a separate claim by some cable VoIP providers’ that the definition of a simple port should exclude phone service including a bundled subscription. “Neither argument matters to consumers who want to switch service providers in a timely manner and neither argument should dissuade the Commission from ensuring consumers receive the full benefits of its number porting rules,” AT&T said.
The resale argument is “specious” because cable VoIP providers don’t resell service bought from CLEC partners, said AT&T, citing the 2007 Time Warner Order. CLECs provide wholesale telecommunications service to cable VoIP providers, the phone company said. In turn, the cable company combines the service with other features to deliver a retail VoIP service they claim is an information service, it said. “Using a telecommunications service as an input into an entirely different service with a different regulatory classification is not ‘resale’ of a telecommunications service.”
The CTIA and some members met with FCC officials this week to ask the commission to approve a shortened interval for simple intermodal ports. CTIA representatives met with advisers to acting Chairman Michael Copps and to Commissioner Robert McDowell, the group said in a filing at the FCC. The current porting interval “functions as a barrier to competition as consumers, frustrated by their attempts to port their phone number to a new carrier, are increasingly inclined to ‘give up’ their attempts to switch providers,” the group said. “The end result is an incentive for carriers to delay number porting in the hopes that their customer will decide to stay.”
T-Mobile said if the FCC allows more than a business day for ports, that should only be for small carriers. “T-Mobile believes that small service providers are capable of meeting a one business day interval and the implementation schedule proposed by T-Mobile,” the carrier said. “If the Commission nevertheless remains concerned about the burdens of these timeframes on small providers, it could adopt a two business day interval and a one-year or 18-month implementation deadline for small providers only.”
Worries about compliance by small carriers shouldn’t lead the FCC to adopt “an unnecessarily lax set of timeframes and deadlines for the large service providers, especially the RBOCs and national VoIP providers,” T-Mobile said. Those carriers “have had the means to reduce their port-out timeframes for years and have chosen to await a Commission mandate before acting.”