LAS VEGAS -- Reform on intercarrier compensation and universal service is possible this year, regulatory officials from Verizon, Qwest, AT&T and Sprint Nextel said Tuesday in a Stifel Nicolaus panel at NXTCOMM. They also gave insights on net neutrality, Verizon’s pending Alltel acquisition and other matters soon to see FCC review.
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.
LAS VEGAS -- Communications industry innovation requires cooperation among a cross-section of the telecom ecosystem, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said Tuesday in a NXTcomm keynote. He made no announcements, instead focusing on telecom’s relationship to the macro-economy. Telstra CEO Solomon Trujillo echoed Stephenson, urging carriers to focus on customer experience when designing new services.
Carriers must manage networks to deal with congestion, said James Hansen, Embarq Network Services senior vice president, speaking at NXTcomm on new communications services. One percent of Embarq customers use about 25 percent of that carrier’s network, and P2P applications are the biggest bandwidth eaters, he said. Google, Microsoft and other net neutrality law proponents want to turn carrier networks into “dumb pipes,” he said. But carriers must manage because they “cannot afford to be all things to all people,” he said. Alternatives to traffic prioritization -- such as charging for bandwidth used -- could be tricky to implement, Hansen said. “We really don’t have the billing system in place… to handle usage-based billing.” Even if it did, “we also know from experience” that such a system would confuse users, who frequently argue individual charges, he said. A better idea might be a “hybrid” approach, with users paying a flat rate with “certain add-ons for peak volume that goes beyond what we deem normal usage,” he said. “That is going to require some systems work, but I think that is what our customer base will live with and accept.” Hansen urged carriers to partner with vendors to get social media and other attractive applications on their networks, Hansen said. Carriers like Embarq are good at building network bandwidth but struggle to make applications that win customers, he said. “Partnering is the way we're going to have to have this occur… Technology is sexy, but at the end you must have a satisfied customer.”
The FCC will distinguish between residential and business connections when collecting broadband data, it said in an order reconsidering the Form 477 order on broadband data collection adopted at the March open meeting (CD March 20 p1). Simultaneously, the FCC released the March order and its latest advanced services report.
The elections will intensify focus on broadband deployment, with lawmakers eyeing the universal service program as tool for wider deployment, speakers said Thursday at a Pike & Fischer conference on broadband policy. Lurking net neutrality legislation slowed progress on major telecom bills this Congress, speakers said. No neutrality legislation is likely this year, but a push could come next Congress if network operator practices anger key lawmakers, speakers said.
It’s premature for the FCC to list what forms of network management are unreasonable, Commissioner Michael Copps said Thursday. Keynoting the Broadband Policy Summit, Copps said the FCC instead should create a way to address complaints. Copps called for a national broadband policy and urged the Defense Department and other government bodies to pitch in.
FCC commissioner offices intend to vote early on all three wireline agenda items set for Thursday’s open meeting, an FCC official confirmed. The source told us he was “100 percent” sure commissioners would vote early on an order on the National Do-Not-Call list and a notice of proposed rulemaking on telecom relay speech-to-speech services. They should also finish votes on an order requiring ten-digit dialing for IP relay services, but that’s less certain, the source said. There doesn’t appear to be dispute over the ten-digit plan, but the order hasn’t seen much movement, the official said.
Two ex-FCC chairmen went head-to-head on which presidential candidate has the better communications policy, in a Federalist Society forum Tuesday. Michael Powell endorsed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., while Reed Hundt backed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Tempers flared on Bell mergers as well as on broadband policy.
Competitors pushed back against incumbent local exchange carriers on a rural ILEC’s petition concerning VoIP interconnection rights. Vermont Telephone wants the FCC to rule that it need not interconnect with Comcast Phone, a VoIP carrier (CD May 21 p7). The petition is “another attempt by a rural incumbent LEC to block or forestall entry by a competitor,” CompTel said. Sprint Nextel agreed, rejecting ILEC-claimed “confusion” on interconnection rules. If ILECs are confused, the FCC should make three rulings, Sprint said: (1) An ILEC may not refuse to negotiate with a certified carrier on the basis that it “thinks” the carrier “might not be” a telecom carrier, (2) All ILECs must negotiate in good faith with requesting carriers, and (3) After receiving an interconnection request, ILECs must provide interim arrangements, number portability and dialing parity. But ILECs said it’s competitors who are guilty of regulatory abuse. “Interconnected VoIP providers and associated wholesale carriers are doing everything they can to evade responsibilities normally required of carriers, particularly with respect to compensating network providers for traffic termination,” said reply comments by the National Exchange Carrier Association, Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance and two other ILEC groups. The FCC should confirm interconnection rules to curb violations, they said.
Governments should “enable that which will come” in setting broadband policy, David Gross, U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy, said Monday in a keynote at a Technology Policy Institute forum. Policy should enable “technologists to develop technology, entrepreneurs to create opportunities, and people to be able to take the services and buy the equipment that they're interested in having,” Gross said, acknowledging that that’s easier said than done. “Incumbency is often a huge impediment” to change, he said, citing “remarkable progress” in extending the Internet the past 10 years. Next week’s OECD ministerial conference in Seoul, South Korea, on the Internet economy’s future highlights the change, he said. The first such meeting in Asia, it will assemble 1,500 to 2,000 people, a “very impressive cross-section” of the world, he said. The last OECD Internet-economy ministerial, in 1998, focused on what government can do to enable people to get online. “It’s happened,” he said. “That set of issues” from 1998 “has broadened in ways that no one could reasonably have anticipated… to envelop the entire world.” Internet matters are figure in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East -- areas that in 1998 had almost no telecom technology, Gross said. “This quantum leap is something people only now are beginning to understand and recognize its importance.” There’s a lesson in that, he said. “Those who seek to predict the future are almost always, invariably wrong.”