Verizon Counters IP Coalition's Claims on Frontier Deal
Verizon representatives urged the FCC to ignore the Coalition for IP Transition's March filing, which raised concerns about Verizon’s proposed acquisition of Frontier. The coalition complained that Verizon and other local exchange carriers “refuse to interconnect on an IP-basis, despite offering IP services to other customers.” The coalition said the transaction “would not yield direct benefits for access customers.”
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The coalition's concerns “are outside the scope of the proceeding,” Verizon representatives said in a meeting with FCC staff, according to a filing posted Tuesday in docket 24-445. “The Coalition fails to identify any transaction-specific harms, despite clear Commission precedent that the agency will impose conditions ‘only to remedy harms that arise from the transaction’ and that it ‘will not impose conditions to remedy pre-existing harms or harms that are unrelated to the transaction.’”
Verizon said it takes two approaches to IP interconnection. “Where a sufficient volume of traffic warrants, Verizon negotiates IP interconnection agreements to exchange traffic by physically interconnecting with its carrier partner at a data center,” it said. “For situations involving a lower volume of traffic, Verizon has developed a technical standard to facilitate the exchange of traffic over the Internet.”