Don't Kill 30-Day Notification Rule for VoIP Number Requests, Say States
State commissions find useful an FCC requirement that VoIP providers give 30 days' notice before applying for numbering resources from a numbering administrator, they replied through Tuesday in docket 18-378. California, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina opposed NCTA’s recommendation…
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to eliminate the requirement as part of the FCC’s biennial review of telecom regulation (see 1902110055). The mandate “enables state commissions to maintain a more accurate assessment of number utilization and conservation and to better anticipate and limit area code exhausts,” replied the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. It's not discriminatory that the rule doesn't apply to traditional voice providers because they're “subject to more substantial state regulatory requirements than interconnected VoIP providers,” said the Michigan Public Service Commission. The North Carolina Utilities Commission doesn't regulate interconnected VoIP, so without a heads' up it would have no knowledge of the state’s VoIP providers, NCUC said. The California PUC and the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission cited useful examples. "A VoIP provider in California in one day asked for over 30 codes in 14 [numbering plan areas]; it sought 4 codes each in 4 of those NPAs," CPUC said. “The CPUC has been working with the provider to attempt to reduce the number of codes requested,” it said. The Voice on the Net Coalition, representing VoIP providers, supported NCTA’s call for elimination. "No number exhaust issues have arisen related to VOIP providers’ requests, all of which are routinely granted," the VON Coalition replied. “This requirement does not apply to other voice service providers.”