Metrocall Inc. announced it has filed formal complaints with the Federal Communications Commission’s Common Carrier Bureau enforcement division, charging several regional Bell and independent telephone companies with continuing to violate the commission’s recently clarified interconnection rules.
Included as defendants are GTE Corp., Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems Inc. and U S West Communications Inc. The company alleges that these phone companies, among others, still are charging Metrocall for terminating local traffic in violation of the recently clarified section of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 regarding Local Exchange Carrier interconnection.
On Dec. 30, the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau stated that “an LEC must cease charging a (Commercial Mobile Radio Service) provider or other carrier for terminating LEC-originated traffic and must provide that traffic to the CMRS provider or other carrier without charge.”
“The Telecom Act and the FCC’s rules could not be any clearer on this point,” said William Collins, president and chief executive officer of Metrocall. “Local exchange carriers are not permitted to charge other carriers for their local traffic.” The company said that Bell Atlantic Corp. and certain other LECs have agreed to end such charges.
Ron Quirk, a lawyer for Joyce & Jacobs L.L.P.-the firm representing Metrocall in this matter-said Metrocall had complaints about the charges before the Common Carrier Bureau released its clarification, but “the clarification letter just put everything into perspective.”
Some LECs contend that because they have to build these dedicated transmission facilities out of their own pocket, they should have some compensation for it. “We have to put in dedicated facilities that we pay for and not recover the cost of equipment or cost of service,” said U S West spokesman Jerry Brown. “They’re taking a regulatory structure and basically turning it on its head to their benefit.”
But the clarification letter stated that its interconnection rules “do not allow an LEC to charge a provider of paging services for the cost of LEC transmission facilities that are used on a dedicated basis to deliver to paging service providers local telecommunications traffic that originates on the LEC’s network.”
Given this position by the FCC, Collins stated his belief that the commission will side with Metrocall. “We thoroughly expect the FCC to rule favorably on Metrocall’s behalf in these complaint proceedings and act to stop these continuing violations.”
While the Common Carrier Bureau’s letter of clarification did shine a light on its views of interconnection rules, it is in no way the final ruling on this matter, and LECs know it-hence, the continuing charges.
“We disagree with the logic of the bureau’s conclusion. We think it deserves the review of the full commission,” said Jim Crawford, public policy spokesman at U S West. He added that U S West is in the process of determining how to respond to that letter and may possibly file its own complaint or an appeal.
“We are not going to ignore the letter, but we don’t intend to comply with it without some further review,” he said. “Metrocall is simply teeing this up for commission review, and that’s fine.”
Officials at GTE withheld any statement on the matter until they could review Metrocall’s filing themselves and Southwestern Bell could not be reached for comment.
In its filing, Metrocall petitioned the FCC to award the company a reimbursement for past charges.
