IP Coalition: Verizon's Interconnection Stance at Odds With Telecom Act
The Coalition for IP Transition fired back Tuesday at Verizon on the issue of whether the FCC should impose interconnection requirements as part of the carrier’s buy of Frontier (see 2504010070). “Verizon admits that it does interconnect with some competitors for the exchange of traffic on an IP basis but only when it wants to do so and only on its terms,” the coalition said in a filing posted in docket 24-445.
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Verizon’s policies “violate the clear language of Section 251” of the Telecom Act, the coalition said. “Congress did not enact legislation that allows incumbent telecommunications carriers to decide to interconnect with only those [competitive local exchange carriers] who are big enough to meet the [incumbent's] internal standards and practices,” the group said: Rather, Congress requires an incumbent "to interconnect with ‘any requesting telecommunications carrier’ ‘at any technically feasible point within the carrier's network’ that is ‘at least equal in quality to that provided by the local exchange carrier to itself or to any subsidiary, affiliate, or any other party to which the carrier provides interconnection.’”