Genachowski Says FCC to Soon Revisit Special Access
The FCC Wireline Bureau will issue a public notice on special access within 30 days, Chairman Julius Genachowski wrote Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii. “These issues have been pending for several years and I appreciate the understandable frustration of many parties regarding the Commission’s lack of progress in addressing special access issues,” Genachowski wrote on Tuesday.
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The special access public notice will seek “focused” comments “on the appropriate analytical framework” for reviewing issues raised in the commission’s long-pending proceeding on special access, Genachowski said. The agency will use the comments to identify what data it requires “and will enable the Commission to move forward on an expedited basis,” he said. Because the issue is important to broadband deployment, the FCC’s national broadband plan “is expected to address issues that will inform the Commission’s analysis of special access services,” he said.
As part of its development of the broadband plan, the FCC asked Thursday whether backhaul costs are barriers to broadband deployment. That public notice, the commission’s 11th on the plan, is not the notice on special access alluded to in Genachowski’s letter, a FCC spokesman said. “Several entities have claimed that adequate, reasonably priced, and efficiently provided access to middle and second mile transport services and facilities play an important -- if not gating -- role in the economics of broadband deployment, particularly in rural, unserved, and underserved areas,” the FCC said in the notice. Comments are due Nov. 4.
USTelecom agrees “with the process the FCC chairman is putting into place, starting with the right analytical framework and determining what data is needed,” a spokesman said. “We are confident this will show what we've been saying all along … that there’s already significant competition in the high-capacity services market.”
“It’s good to see they recognize that additional data is needed to make a determination about the marketplace,” a Verizon spokesman said about the chairman’s letter. “It makes sense to identify what data is needed and to take the appropriate steps to gather it. Verizon has provided our view of what the appropriate data is that should be collected, and we're glad to see they are taking these steps.”
Advocates for special access regulation are champing at the bit to weigh in. Sprint Nextel and the No-Choke-Points Coalition released separate statements on the broadband plan notice, thanking the commission for asking about the middle mile. “The FCC is demonstrating its commitment to conduct a data-driven, fact-based inquiry into the special access marketplace,” Sprint said.