IP Interconnection Remains Important Sticking Point for Industry with Federal, State Regulators

Regulators should not assume that they can control the IP transition, said Maggie McCready, Verizon executive director-public policy. “The market and the technology is already going toward IP, and it is not going to wait for the regulators to catch up,” said McCready. “We need regulation protections for emergencies and healthcare, but if we freeze things in place, innovation will be denied.” Regulators should not set the rules because the market does not have the patience for that anymore, she said. Harold Feld, Public Knowledge senior vice president, said disasters and emergency situations need to a priority for the FCC. “Verizon made a rational decision in Fire Island, [N.Y.,] but it made the wrong decision,” said Feld. “The FCC needs to prioritize these situations when companies want to replace systems with something else rather than” rebuild it.

The FCC needs to focus on an orderly process to ensure competition for the IP transition, said Eric Einhorn, Windstream senior vice president. “A lot of the issues in this debate get conflated, and we should be concerned about how the FCC’s policies translate as the technology changes,” said Einhorn. “There are plenty of issues like TDM that goes over fiber and copper eroding, and the commission needs to look at these issues and provide answers.” The FCC needs to do a regulatory review, said Tom Cohen, a lawyer for the American Cable Association. “This would give us an excuse to see what makes sense in today’s world, and what databases we need to change manually,” said Cohen.

The FCC’s role is to deal with problems, not to provide overarching regulatory procedures, said Mike Romano, NTCA senior vice president: “The IP transition is a problem and we need to deal with this problem and not put it off.” Another part of the problem is the state regulatory commissions who have deregulated wireless, said Feld. “Twenty-five of the state commissions have opted out of wireless and now the FCC has to make the decision,” said Feld.

One way to determine wireless regulations would be for the FCC to create trials, said Feld. “We need to see a program with real trials that monitors call quality issues and technological issues,” said Feld. “Time, day and weather can dramatically change the quality of wireless calls.” For trials to work, there needs to be focus on the regulatory structure and policies, said Einhorn. These types of trials need to be classified as data collection rather than trials, said Romano. “It’s inevitable that the regulators are going to get involved,” said Einhorn. “We need to create a framework where parties can come together.”

Congress needs to encourage the FCC to make next-generation high-speed broadband more widely available nationwide, said Bruce Mehlman, Internet Innovation Alliance co-chair, in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1eM19T5). “In a rare piece of good news from Washington, there is increasing bipartisan agreement that the best way forward would be to hold market trials to quickly test how these modern networks can be deployed efficiently and effectively throughout the nation,” said Mehlman. Consumers would benefit from the “FCC-supervised limited market trials” that AT&T seeks to initiate, he said. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel endorsed “local-specific IP trials to kick start the IP transition,” Melhman wrote. Commissioner Ajit Pai supports an all IP-pilot program to show how companies “can switch off the old networks as customers migrate to newer, next-generation networks,” said Mehlman, based on the Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee hearing on the FCC’s FY14 budget (CD Sept 12 p1). “Every dollar spent supporting the legacy network is a dollar that cannot be spent building out new high-speed broadband networks,” he said. “By modernizing these new networks, we will make even faster broadband available, creating thousands of new jobs and even entire new industries.” (sfriedman@warren-news.com)