CTIA and three of its major carrier members urged the...
CTIA and three of its major carrier members urged the FCC to rebuff a move by RLECs to change the commission’s policy on how intraMTA traffic is treated. The FCC has long held that calls originated by or terminated to…
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a wireless carrier should be deemed “local” and subject to the reciprocal compensation framework, not the access charges regime, the wireless carriers said. Representatives of CTIA, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile met with Michael Steffen, aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski and with Wireline Bureau staff. “The intraMTA rule has been in effect for more than 15 years, has been upheld numerous times in court, and has always governed all intraMTA traffic,” the wireless carriers said, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm2uh6). “Last year’s [USF] Order once again properly rebuffed RLEC efforts to repeal this rule in the context of traffic delivered by interexchange carriers. To the extent the RLECs’ arguments rely on any suggestion that the [USF] Order created new law, they are simply incorrect.” The changes RLECs seek would “upend” the long-standing framework, “basing compensation on whether or not a particular intraMTA call was routed through an IXC,” the filing said. “This approach would depart from decades of Commission precedent, and create endless opportunities for gaming and abuse.”