Cable Fires Back at AT&T In CLEC Access Charge Dispute

"AT&T wishes to be compensated by Comcast, Cox, TWC and other facilities-based providers of VoIP services for the transport and termination of interstate calls to end users on AT&T local networks, but AT&T objects to paying the same compensation to those voice providers for furnishing the same transport and termination service to deliver AT&T interstate calls to end users on their local networks,” the three cable companies said. “Apparently, when AT&T provides this service, the rate it assesses is reasonable, but when AT&T is assessed the same rate by Comcast, Cox and TWC for the same service, AT&T believes it is subject to ‘artificially inflated switched access charges.'” AT&T’s “resort to scare tactics” doesn’t “justify depriving cable voice providers of fair treatment under the intercarrier compensation rules,” the cable companies said, and “AT&T’s claim that accounting for network architectures and business models most commonly used to deliver VoIP traffic would somehow apply access charges to the Internet is nonsense.”

It’s not clear how seriously the FCC is weighing cable’s request to waive the rules as staff drafts the mammoth USF order. But AT&T apparently wanted to “put down a marker” on the issue before lobbying ended, a telecom official told us. The matter will likely draw more parties in the days ahead, including an ex parte notice from backbone provider Level 3, telecom officials said.

AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist scoffed at cable’s response Tuesday. “If the cable companies were truly focused on fairness, they would seek rules that give no regulatory advantage to largely unregulated VoIP services over wireless services, which are prohibited from filing tariffs for access charges,” he told us. “Instead, they seem to prefer the a la carte approach to regulation: Obtaining the regulatory benefits of access tariffs, while simultaneously arguing for immunity from the burdens of regulation. Additionally, they double down on this curious approach to ‘fairness’ by claiming a right to charge for services they actually do not perform.” As to Comcast’s “nonsense” charge, Hultquist said his antagonists “yanked the door wide open to applying access charges on the Internet.” Comcast “would allow CLECs to collect access charges based on the ’transport and termination’ of packets across the Internet,” Hultquist said. “Were the FCC to go along with this arbitrary scheme of regulatory arbitrage, it would not withstand judicial scrutiny."

USTelecom President Walter McCormick called cable’s position “remarkable.” The cable operators are trying to carve out a “special interest” rule that has “nothing to do with broadband deployment, infrastructure investment, or job creation,” he said on the group’s blog. Most of McCormick’s message was spent urging the FCC to stay “focused” on the pending order and blasting wireless and cable companies as well as “career protesters” such as Free Press. But he said cable’s position on access charges is “a new version of the ‘identical support’ rule, whereby cable companies would get paid for access services they don’t actually perform, based upon the network functions and costs of incumbent carriers.”