Industry Welcomes Draft FCC Access Stimulation Order

Industry welcomed a draft FCC order that would modify access stimulation rules to close a loophole exploited by extending the rules to include IP-enabled service providers (IPES). Commissioners will consider the item during their open meeting Thursday (see 2303300070). Some sought clarifying language to ensure no additional loopholes may arise.

Lumen raised concerns about certain aspects of the draft order, in a meeting with the Wireline Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics staff. The company also had separate meetings with aides to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, Commissioner Brendan Carr and Commissioner Nathan Simington.

Lumen said it's concerned “an IPES entity that becomes designated as an access stimulating entity may decline to enter into a commercial arrangement with its designated [intermediate access provider] without approval from that tandem owner,” per an ex parte filing posted last week in docket 18-155. It asked the FCC to clarify that an IAP may reject calls bound for an IPES provider that are delivered to its tandem if they're unable to reach agreement.

The provider also raised concerns about the access stimulation ratio calculations, saying the current proposal of calculating on an end-office-by-end-office basis "has the potential to create problems." It suggested restoring a “whole company traffic ratio counting” rule.

USTelecom sought some clarifying language on the location of an end office, in separate meetings with aides to Simington, Carr and Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. The group also met with Wireline Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics staff. It sought language clarifying an IPES provider may “choose to publish and keep up to date a list of its end office equivalents, their geographic location, and the telephone numbers" and an interexchange carrier “may use that information from the IPES provider … as the basis for filing a complaint or a court action.”

The group also asked the FCC to clarify that interexchange carriers relying on their own data in a complaint “may calculate the interstate terminating-to-originating traffic ratio using the total traffic associated with the operating company number of the IPES provider as if the IPES provider has a single end office.” Identifying the location of an end office is “difficult and sometimes impossible” because there's currently no industry source, USTelecom said.

“Finding ways to eliminate access arbitrage has been a years-long journey for the FCC and industry,” emailed a Bandwidth spokesperson. The draft order will “help to address an intercarrier compensation loophole that arose from a few related commission decisions in the past,” he said, saying Bandwidth is “hopeful that adoption of this order will remove incentives to maintain inefficient, TDM interconnection based on the possibility of collecting TDM access charges.”

Bandwidth proposed some changes to the draft, in a letter to the FCC, including clarifying language that providers don't have to carry IPES access stimulation traffic without being compensated and that carriers don't “evade the access stimulation rules by imposing charges for functions that are not performed.”

The draft order "continues to suffer from an incomplete and, frankly, misleading depiction of call flows and call route choices," said HD Carrier in a meeting with Wireline Bureau and Office of Economic Analysis staff. The company said the draft "looks like an effort to keep certain providers in TDM" by making the TDM path "more attractive to these providers by making it free to use in certain cases and thereby endorses discriminatory behavior."