WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau last week issued an order granting the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association’s request for a nine-month stay of wireless number portability requirements. The Wireless Bureau said it found extending the deadline from June 30, 1999, to March 31, 2000, was necessary to ensure efficient development of wireless number portability.
Portability refers to telephone subscribers keeping their telephone number when switching service providers. The FCC has said that number portability is essential for competition to develop.
The decision was hailed by both CTIA and the Personal Communications Industry Association, which both noted the technical difficulties in implementing wireless number portability. “We are extremely pleased that the FCC recognizes the formidable hurdles that the wireless industry faces in meeting these requirements,” said CTIA President Tom Wheeler.
We have consistently said that “arbitrary technical deadlines don’t make sense. In that sense, we were supportive of the request,” said Mark Golden, PCIA senior vice president for industry affairs.
CTIA continually has said that it was technically impossible to implement wireless number portability prior to the 1999 deadline.
CTIA has another request pending before the FCC urging the agency not to enforce the wireless number portability rules until after the build out of personal communications services. This second request 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.
In a statement released with the order, Daniel Phythyon, chief of the wireless bureau, referred to the “forbearance” request as the next step in the process. “The majority of [commercial mobile radio service] providers are not going to be able to make the current deadline. They need additional time to develop and test standards in order to provide wireless number portability. The next step in this process will be for the [FCC] to address CTIA’s petition for forbearance of local number portability, which has a statutory deadline of Dec. 16, 1998,” Phythyon said.
The Telecommunications Resellers Association did not agree with the FCC’s decision. TRA recently told the FCC it should not delay the rollout of wireless number portability because of claims of technical difficulty. “Achieving wireless number portability using the method proposed by many of the leading wireless carriers amounts to technological overkill,” said TRA Vice President David Gusky at that time.
Last week, Gusky said that he hoped “this is it” regarding the new deadline of March 31, 2000. “We hope and encourage the [FCC] to hold fast to that deadline so we can move forward on wireless number portability and the benefits it will certainly bring to consumers.”
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 Tenth Circuit, are set for Sept. 24 in Oklahoma City.
The deadline extension was not entirely unexpected. When the FCC established the implementation schedule for wireless carriers, it recognized that due to the technical complexities of implementing wireless number portability, wireless carriers would require more time than local exchange carriers to deploy number portability. LECs already have begun phasing in number portability. For this reason, the FCC allowed the wireless bureau to extend the deadline for no more than nine months. The order last week fulfills this expectation.
The wireless industry still is developing standards for wireless number portability. Standards for analog, Code Division Multiple Access and Time Division Multiple Access technology are in the balloting process. Standards for Global System for Mobile communications-based systems are expected to be balloted early next year. The standard will define ways to separate the mobile identification number and the mobile directory number. The wireless industry has determined this separation is necessary to allow for nationwide roaming. The FCC has decreed wireless carriers implement wireless number portability while maintaining nationwide roaming.
The FCC said commenters were concerned that allowing the extension could have an impact on number pooling. Number pooling is a process of conserving numbers where carriers return to a general pool unused numbers from their assigned blocks. Carriers are assigned numbers by exchanges, known as NXXs. NXX codes are blocks of 10,000 numbers. Number portability is necessary for number pooling because carriers port unused numbers in an NXX and then other carriers check the database for the carrier that is now using that particular number. The absence of wireless number portability means that wireless carriers cannot pool numbers.
The North American Numbering Council is trying to develop a numbering resource plan that would include some form of number pooling. Golden said that PCIA has been encouraging NANC to come up “with an approach so that everybody has a fair chance to get numbers … Don’t penalize or advantage any of the carriers due to the technology they use.”
