The FCC should issue a declaratory ruling that...

The FCC should issue a declaratory ruling that “equivalent functionality” for end office switching does not require a CLEC or its VoIP partner to provide the loop facility to the called party under the VoIP symmetry rule, XO said in an ex parte filing Monday (http://bit.ly/1eCBTl6). “AT&T’s interpretation of access charges applicable to VoIP-PSTN traffic turns the VoIP symmetry rule on its head, increasing carrier disputes where AT&T has withheld payment of end office access charges that do not meet AT&T’s criteria,” XO said. XO agrees with other CLEC commenters that the core function of an end office local switch “cannot and should not rationally be defined by the lines to which it connects, but by the functions it actually performs on the network,” it said, quoting a letter by Level 3 and Bandwidth.com.