WASHINGTON-The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association last week convened the third annual wireless number portability forum to discuss ways to implement wireless number portability before the June 30 deadline.
Portability facilitates telephone subscribers keeping their telephone number when switching service providers. The Federal Communications Commission has said number portability is essential for competition to develop.
At the same time, CTIA continues to say it is technically impossible to implement wireless number portability within that time frame and continues to urge the FCC not to enforce the wireless number portability rules until after the buildout of personal communications services networks.
CTIA has two requests regarding local number portability before the FCC. The first would delay LNP implementation for nine months until after 2000. The second would delay implementation for at least five years, at which time the FCC would re-evaluate the competitive market to see if LNP is necessary for competition.
Both CTIA requests are predicated on the belief commercial mobile radio service is different than wireline service and therefore should not be subject to the same competitive rules. Local exchange carriers today are implementing local number portability in five phases based on metropolitan statistical areas.
The FCC expects action on the CMRS local number portability extension requests sometime soon. It is not clear whether action would occur at the commission level or at the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. The FCC must make a decision on the extension before June. The FCC must decide by December whether to grant the forbearance petition.
In lieu of FCC action, the wireless industry, led by Bell Atlantic Mobile, has filed a lawsuit against the FCC, claiming the FCC did not sufficiently warn, and allow comment for, the implementation dates for wireless number portability. Oral arguments in this case, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, are set for Sept. 24 in Oklahoma City.
The status of these efforts were detailed by Michael F. Altschul, CTIA’s vice president and general counsel, to forum participants. “It is our members’ view that the competitive benefits [of wireless number portability] are outweighed by the burdens. This is not going to bankrupt anybody, but we are going to make the claim that money that goes to one kind of activity cannot go to another activity. While number portability may not be totally unimportant, it is not as important as other things that wireless carriers have to deal with,” Altschul said.
The crux of the industry’s argument for extension is the same one used by the industry regarding the implementation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Altschul said. “It is pointless to make carriers come in and make a switch-by-switch demonstration when the standards process has not been completed. In such a circumstance, a blanket extension is not only appropriate but necessary,” he said.
Although Altschul described FCC feedback on the extension as “quite positive,” he did say CTIA was asked by wireless bureau staff to detail how the wireless industry as a whole met the test for an extension. This defense was filed at the FCC Aug. 13.
The letter seems to imply the outlook was not quite as rosy. “The clear indication was that the wireless bureau could not grant the requested extension pursuant to delegated authority since the record did not seem to satisfy the test,” Altschul said in the letter.
Altschul suggested in his presentation the FCC should take its cues from Finland, where wireless and wireline are both competitive thriving industries without number portability.
The purpose of the CTIA Wireless Number Portability forum was to review a document released last month by CTIA known as the “CTIA Report on Wireless Number Portability Version 2.0.” This document was written and compiled by CTIA Number Advisory Group and incorporates the industry’s progress in implementing wireless number portability since a similar document was released a year ago.
