Qwest rejoined USTelecom, nearly eight years after falling out with the association over membership dues. In 2001, USTelecom suspended Qwest as a member, saying the company was four months behind in paying membership fees and the association didn’t want to create the lower-priced class of membership that Qwest had sought. The same day, Qwest said it “resigned” from USTelecom because it didn’t fully serve its needs. Qwest has rejoined USTelecom as a tier-one member, the same level it was before, a USTelecom spokesman told us Friday. The association doesn’t give out dues information, he said. A Qwest spokesman said it had left “because we believed it to be in our best interests to do so at that time,” but today it is “very excited” to be back. In statements, executives didn’t mention Qwest’s controversial departure from USTelecom. Qwest’s return marks a “formalization” of a collaboration that’s been ongoing “for a number of years,” USTelecom Chairman Ron McCue said. Qwest Senior Vice President Steve Davis said Qwest joined “to work together with their other member companies on important communications issues such as broadband deployment, Universal Service Fund reform, and intercarrier compensation reform, including traffic pumping and phantom traffic.”
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Deputy Managing Editor for Privacy Daily. Bender leads a team of journalists and reports on state privacy legislation, rulemaking and litigation. In previous roles at Communications Daily, he covered telecom and internet policy in the states, Congress and at the FCC. He has won awards for his reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of multiple dystopian sci-fi novels. Keep up to date with Bender by reading his blog and following him on social media including Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.
Legal action by relay provider Sorenson is “on the table” if the FCC goes ahead with a proposal to reconfigure rates for video relay services, Mike Maddix, the company’s regulatory affairs manager, said in an interview. The commission is considering an early change to rates used to determine compensation for VRS under the interstate telecom relay service fund. The agency is currently following a three-year interim rate plan set by the National Exchange Carrier Association in 2007. In comments last week, Sorenson said abandoning the three-year plan would be “arbitrary and capricious,” and possibly unconstitutional (CD July 8 p3). Taking the FCC to court is a “last resort,” but the company has had success challenging commission orders in the past, said Maddix. He cited a recent appeals court victory on TRS lobbying rules (CD June 8 p3).
The FCC should write detailed rules on 911 network competition, said public safety groups in comments responding to an FCC Wireline Bureau public notice. The notice arose out of two arbitrations involving interconnection disputes between competitive 911 network provider Intrado Communications and Embarq and Verizon (CD June 8 p6). However, some telecom companies said the broad issue of 911 competition should be dealt with in a separate proceeding.
A possible FCC decision to reconfigure video relay service rates may be illegal, said Sorenson Communications, the biggest U.S. VRS provider, in comments this week at the FCC. The commission is considering an early change to rates used to determine compensation for VRS under the interstate telecom relay service fund (CD June 26 p6). The agency is currently following a three-year interim rate plan set by the National Exchange Carrier Association in 2007.
The FCC voted 3-0 Thursday to allow CenturyTel’s $11.6 billion acquisition of Embarq. As expected, the commission conditioned approval on the rural carriers’ abiding by “voluntary commitments” (CD June 25 p7) submitted by the companies last week. The commitments relate to broadband rollout and to CenturyTel wholesale practices that competitive carriers raised qualms about. The deal is expected to close in less than a week and work combining the companies has begun, CenturyTel officials said.
An upcoming FCC report about online child safety doesn’t include new rules, a commission attorney said at a Family Online Safety Institute lunch Wednesday. That the FCC might regulate in the area was a concern expressed in many comments at the agency, said Robert Cannon, senior counsel in the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis. Meanwhile, officials from CTIA and Verizon said industry can address online safety issues without government intervention.
The FCC is getting close to approving the Embarq- CenturyTel merger, and an order probably will circulate this week, a commission official told us on Tuesday. People in the office of acting Chairman Michael Copps have held several meetings with Embarq and CenturyTel in the past week, and the companies submitted a revised list of “voluntary commitments” Friday (CD June 23 p6). The companies have received the rest of the approvals for the deal.
The FCC should stop “excessive” special-access pricing by AT&T and Verizon, the NoChokePoints Alliance, a new coalition of competitors and customers of the big phone companies (CD June 18 p7), told reporters Monday. “Releasing the broadband economy from the choke hold these huge phone companies have on the special-access market will be a catalyst for innovation and investment in the broadband marketplace,” said spokeswoman Maura Corbett. The coalition’s statement prompted a flurry of counter-statements from incumbent local exchange carriers and others.
AT&T could cope if the FCC adds a fifth principle on nondiscrimination to its Internet policy statement, but the company doesn’t think it’s necessary, Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi said Friday. “If it were structured properly, I could certainly conceive of one that we could live with,” Cicconi said on a panel on net neutrality at the Pike & Fischer Broadband Summit.
Verizon won its appeal of an FCC decision denying the company unbundling forbearance in six metropolitan statistical areas. Ruling Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit remanded the order, directing the FCC to better justify its use of a market-share test. But the ruling doesn’t necessarily mean that Verizon will get what it wants.