Regulators should “embrace” and “empower” the end users of phone systems, not AT&T and other incumbents using old public switched telephone network technologies, said Feature Group IP CEO Lowell Feldman at a Federal Communications Bar Association lunch Wednesday. Feature Group, which runs a backbone Internet Protocol network in Texas for VoIP companies like Skype, has a forbearance petition before the FCC seeking a ruling that IP providers need not pay access charges to interconnect with PSTN carriers (CD March 17 p7). Regulators who want to be pro-competitive should “let technologies take their natural cycles,” Feldman said, comparing traditional switched phone networks to Polaroid cameras. Polaroid was a “fantastic technology” that people have a “romantic fascination” with, but Polaroid is dead because a better technology has made it obsolete, he said. Holding back innovation is “not American” and hurts the economy, he said. “I'm not talking Democrat or Republican. It’s just wrong.” Incumbent PSTN technology still dictates how the phone system is regulated, Feldman said. Incumbents force all phone companies, regardless of technology, to use phone numbers and be part of the same billing scheme, he said. “If you don’t, you're doing something literally fraudulent,” he said. AT&T and other incumbents can’t trace calls from the Feature Group network back to a human, which is why a cellphone will identify a Skype call as an “unavailable” number, he said. But though the call is from a real person, AT&T fines Feature Group for fraud, said Feldman. AT&T has rebuked Feature Group’s attempts to set up an interconnection agreement that would fix the problem, and Texas courts and regulators have pointed Feature Group to the FCC’s door, he said.
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.
Policymakers should promote broadband deployment to help reduce global carbon emissions, industry officials said on a Freedom to Connect conference panel Tuesday. Broadband at very fast speeds reduces business travel and promotes e- commerce, they said. “We are not going to reach the kind of efficiencies I believe we can reach without high-speed broadband networks that are hooked up to our homes and communities,” said Kathy Brown, a Verizon senior vice president.
Network congestion is “a worry” in Japan, said Adam Peake in a panel at the F2C conference. Peake is an executive research fellow at the Center for Global Communications of the International University of Japan. Some U.S. net neutrality advocates argue that building network capacity would relieve ISP congestion woes. Japan has the world’s fastest, least expensive broadband, Peake said. But those benefits encourage users to “pump out a lot of traffic,” he said. About two-thirds of ISP backbone traffic is residential, he noted. Japan has implemented net neutrality principles similar to proposed FCC rules, but ISPs increasingly use packet-shaping to target P2P and manage traffic, he said.
A Google message of wireless openness “is going to take root and it’s going to be difficult to dislodge it,” Google Android Group Manager Rich Miner said at the Freedom to Connect conference. Android, the search firm’s upcoming open-source operating system, will give consumers a taste for openness and teach them to value it, Miner said. The trait will influence how they pick a wireless carrier, breaking down “walls of innovation erected by handset makers [and] carriers,” he said. The first Android devices ship later this year, he said. But a more critical issue for wireless may be access to spectrum, said Michael Calabrese, a New America Foundation director. The 700 MHz auction raised the barrier to wireless entry, with the “DSL duopoly” Verizon and AT&T taking the most spectrum, he said. Verizon’s “Any Devices, Any Apps” effort is promising, but the “jury is still out” on how open the network will be and how Verizon will price it, he said.
Competitive telcos acted in droves to oppose a Verizon petition seeking forbearance in Rhode Island from loop and transport unbundling requirements (CD Feb 29 p12). In four filings, CompTel and 29 CLECs urged that the FCC reject a Verizon petition they said reprised one the agency denied. “Verizon has demonstrated both its astonishing sense of entitlement and the fundamental flaws of the forbearance petition,” said One Communications, Time Warner Telecom, Integra and Cbeyond in a 202-page filing. Sprint Nextel, a longtime special access reform advocate, also opposed the petition. Comments were due Friday.
Bell Canada Enterprises got Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission approval for its private equity buyout by the Ontario Teachers consortium, with conditions, Bell Canada said Friday. The deal “proposed to privatize the country’s largest communications company and included significant foreign interest,” said CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein. “Consistent with previous decisions, we have imposed conditions to address our concerns relating to corporate governance,” he said. “These conditions will ensure that control of BCE remains in Canadian hands once the transaction is completed.”
The FCC should stop cable companies from slowing video service ports to competing TV companies, Verizon said in a Wednesday petition. “The process to switch video providers is… cumbersome for consumers,” Verizon said. “Cable incumbents do not accept disconnect orders from the new provider; instead, they require the customer to contact them directly to cancel service after choosing a new video provider and to return equipment. This significantly complicates the process of switching video providers, thereby entrenching the cable incumbents’ dominant market position.”
An economic slowdown means opportunity for alternative phone companies, as well as curtains for some VoIP companies, industry officials said in interviews. Meanwhile, former Bell companies and other wireline incumbents dismissed notions that their businesses are vulnerable.
Wireline carriers sounded alarms over an FCC proposal to shrink the number porting shot clock for completing wireline- to-wireline and intermodal number requests to 48 hours from four days. MetroPCS and one state regulator said the time interval could be shorter still. The proposal is part of a further notice to an order mandating that carriers use four validation fields in porting requests.
The FCC hasn’t decided whether it will invite the MPAA or Hollywood studios to the Stanford hearing on network management, Chairman Kevin Martin said at a news conference Thursday. The groups have opposed neutrality regulation, saying it could make enforcing copyrights more difficult. But the action that spurred FCC concern about management practices, Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent, “didn’t have anything to do with copyright or lawful content,” Martin said. “If it did, I think the commission has very clearly stated that all of our net neutrality principles protect lawful content.” Martin said he was unsure whether the FCC would hold a hearing after the one April 17 at Stanford. “We'll wait and see how the commission feels about the success” of that one, he said.