Carriers Condemn Equal-Access Scripting Rule
Competition has removed need for a rule requiring incumbents to tell consumers that they have a choice of long- distance providers, incumbent local exchange carriers and one competitor said in comments last week on a USTelecom petition. The equal-access scripting rule, which also requires ILECs to read potential customers a randomized list of stand-alone wireline providers on request, applies only to small and midsized companies.
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Carriers called the rule pointless and burdensome. The requirement doesn’t apply to wireless, cable or VoIP carriers, and in 2007 the FCC granted Qwest, Verizon and AT&T forbearance relief in an order easing structural rules for the companies. The commission didn’t extend relief to small and midsized ILECs, pointing to “the potential for significant differences in competitive circumstances and the lack of record with regard to non-BOC-affiliate, independent incumbent LECs.”
The scripting rule is a relic of the 1980s, designed after the Bell breakup “to introduce long distance competition to consumers,” the National Exchange Carrier Association and three other groups of small rural carriers said in joint comments. Now competitors have huge ad budgets, they said. “It is difficult to imagine at this point that consumers in any area need to be told by their local telephone company that they have ‘choices’ in long distance service providers.”
Today’s long-distance market is teeming with competitive LECs, wireless carriers, cable and VoIP companies, said the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance. The group represents midsized ILECs. “Not only is the market for long distance competitive, but it has arguably been eclipsed by a market for distanceless services, in which toll boundaries are invisible to consumers who purchase service bundles that include local and long distance services (often of unlimited volumes) at a flat monthly rate,” the Alliance said.
The rule is particularly burdensome to small carriers, which don’t have many employees, the rural associations said. The scripting rule “creates unnecessary costs for carriers: compilation of lists; rotation of lists; training of personnel; and, opportunity costs of time and expense devoted to this requirement,” the Alliance said. “Although these requirements may have been useful in developing the current competitive market, that goal has been achieved and these burdensome preparatory steps, now useless, should be discarded.”
Even competitor Time Warner Cable called for the rule’s end. The cable company also asked the FCC to affirm that the rule doesn’t apply to competitive providers. “Market forces already have produced the results that the equal access obligations sought to achieve -- namely, lowering prices and improving service quality for competitive long distance services.”