Access Stimulation Definition to Change After FCC Vote
New rules to help prevent access stimulation by telecom providers that take advantage of inefficiencies in existing intercarrier compensation rules got unanimous approval at the Thursday commissioners' meeting. Under the updates, carriers don't need a revenue-sharing arrangement driving call volume to them in order to meet the definition (see 1909190035).
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Officials made last-minute changes to the order in docket 18-155, which should appear soon, said Wireline Bureau officials at the meeting. The changes came during the weeklong sunshine period before the meeting after intense industry input. The revisions give incumbent rural rate-of-return carriers a higher threshold of 10:1 terminating/originating call traffic plus 500,000 minutes monthly incoming call volume before setting a trigger to designate the LECs as access stimulators (see 1909250057).
"Today's order gets to the heart of the problem by correcting the incentives," said Commissioner Brendan Carr. "If a carrier engages in access stimulation, they will not be able to foist those costs onto ratepayers and profit at our expense."
"The record makes clear that entire businesses and markets have developed around interstate access charges, even in the aftermath of the commission's 2011 efforts to shift end office terminating charges to bill-and-keep and establish that framework as the ultimate end state of intercarrier compensation traffic," Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said. He expressed concerns "over the particulars of this line-drawing effort and suspect that it will need to be revisited."
NTCA Senior Vice President-Industry Affairs and Business Development Mike Romano emailed he appreciates "the efforts referenced in the staff presentation and the commissioners' statements today that appear to take into account that innocent rural incumbent carriers should not be caught up by a broadened definition of access stimulation." He said NTCA is eager to review the final text to make sure it protects against "false positives" in access stimulation.
AT&T has long supported FCC efforts to combat schemes that game the intercarrier compensation system and drive up consumer costs, skewing the market for legitimate voice services, said AT&T Executive Vice President-Regulatory and State External Affairs Joan Marsh. Verizon supported the order and looks forward "to working with the FCC to eliminate the other opportunities for arbitrage and fraud in the intercarrier compensation system," said Will Johnson, senior vice president-federal and legal affairs.