Soap Box: Policy Challenges Persist in 2008

2008 has been a year of policy challenges for competitive communications providers. COMPTEL and its members continue the fight to preserve their ability to obtain the wholesale inputs they need to provide high-quality, innovative services and expand their networks in an effort to ensure that consumers have a choice of carriers and services.

Ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed into law, the incumbent local exchange carriers have challenged their obligations under the Act, which has had the impact of suppressing or delaying the development of competition. As the incumbent carriers continue to grow ever larger through mergers of both wireline and wireless operations, they press for more and more deregulation in both the regulatory and legislative arenas. Monitoring and fighting these deregulatory efforts have presented constant challenges for competitors and consumer advocates.

Forbearance Process Reform

One of the current challenges has been created by Section 10 of the Act, which provides for a process called “forbearance.” Section 10 was intended to allow companies under the regulation of the FCC to file a petition to eliminate outdated regulatory obligations, which were no longer needed and did not adversely affect the “public interest.” It requires the FCC to act within 12 months of the date that a petition is filed, with the option to extend the deadline by three months. If the commission fails to act, the petition is “deemed granted.” The 12- or 15-month timeline was designed to create a mandatory “shot clock” on the FCC, which on many occasions has failed to act in a timely manner. Although we share this concern about the FCC’s failure to act on many critical issues, no one envisioned the impact Section 10 would have, as happened in March 2006 when a petition Verizon filed for forbearance from regulations concerning its broadband facilities was “deemed granted” in a 2-2 tie vote. In addition, no order was released so the decision could not be challenged in court.

Incumbent carriers, as a matter of course, use the forbearance process, rather than rulemakings, to free themselves from statutory and regulatory obligations. COMPTEL and its members have brought this broken forbearance process to the attention of Congress and urged the enactment of reform. In July, Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) held an oversight hearing on the problems with the forbearance process. Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) and Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) have introduced legislation that would eliminate the “deemed granted” language from Section 10 of the Act. While COMPTEL wholeheartedly supports these efforts, additional reform is needed to prevent regulated entities from rewriting, or effectively repealing, the Act without Congressional oversight.