Time Warner Telecom Asks FCC for VoIP Certainty

Staff

22 years ago

Time Warner Telecom is asking the FCC to ensure that incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) are not able to exploit their market power in the business market to limit the ability of competitors to provide more efficient and innovative IP network connections and IP services to businesses across the country. At issue is Time Warner Telecom’s objection to the petition filed by SBC that these services should not be subject to tariff because they are available at low entry barriers and face fierce competition the Internet offers. Time Warner Telecom contends that SBC and other incumbents control the end user connections that serve the vast majority of the nation’s businesses, giving it tremendous market power.

In its filing, Time Warner Telecom encourages the FCC to focus on the following goals:

Regulation should be technology neutral regarding voice telecommunications services provided to end users, including IP-based voice services.
The FCC should focus on regulating companies with market power and ensuring that all voice providers are responsible for maintaining social policy goals.
Legacy monopoly regulation should not be applied to any non-dominant carrier, regardless of the technology used to provide the services.
All voice services that provide the functionality of basic telephone service are appropriately placed in Title II of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, where the FCC has the ability to forbear from
unnecessary regulations while minimizing the risks of successful legal challenge to the Commission’s regulations and the associated uncertainty

Time Warner Telecom contends that these goals can only be achieved if the FCC does the following:

Classifies the broadband transmission inputs used to transmit VoIP “applications” as telecommunications services and requires that the loops and transport used to transmit VoIP and other IP applications to business customers are offered by ILECs under tariff on just, reasonable and nondiscriminatory rates, terms and conditions until an ILEC is deemed ‘non-dominant’ in a particular market.

Classifies as “telecommunications services” those IP voice “applications”/services (generally speaking, those that utilize NANP numbers and provide two-way voice service) that provide the functionalities that Congress intended would be subject to the social policy requirements in the Act and, to the extent possible, eliminates major differences between rules applicable to competing VoIP and circuit-switched voice services.

http://www.twtelecom.com