Level 3 Cites Telynx 'Misunderstanding,' Urges FCC to Deny Request to Condition Deal
Level 3 said Telnyx's wholesale product assertions "appear to reflect a misunderstanding of information" communicated to Telnyx by Level 3's sales staff. Telnyx, a VoIP provider to enterprise customers, recently complained about a lack of access to Level 3's wholesale…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
products and asked the FCC to condition CenturyLink's planned purchase of Level 3 on commitments to offer reasonably priced wholesale services (see 1704180020). "Contrary to Telnyx’s assertions in its ex parte, the transaction through which CenturyLink ... proposes to acquire Level 3 ... has had no bearing on Level 3’s ability or willingness to offer the products in question to Telnyx," said a Level 3 filing in docket 16-403. Level 3 said it discussed its "customer owned telephone number" (COTN) service with Telnyx in Q1, but hadn't made the service widely available and offered it to others only through "individualized negotiations." After the discussions with Telnyx, "Level 3’s product team paused COTN development when it determined that the necessary development resources were not available," the filing said. "Level 3 therefore decided not to offer COTN to Telnyx, or to any other new customer, until additional resources become available," and it communicated its decision to Telnyx March 31. "Level 3 is unaware of any basis for Telnyx’s assertion that 'after the merger the combined CenturyLink will likely not offer the product to competing service providers,'" it said. "To Level 3’s knowledge, no decision has been made regarding whether the combined company will offer COTN. ... The claim that Level 3 declined to sell Telnyx service because of the Transaction is unfounded, and Telnyx’s request that Level 3 be required to sell a non-standard, not generally available product as a condition of the Commission’s approval of the Transaction should be denied."