WASHINGTON-The postponement of arguments in a federal appeals court on the wireless number portability issue seems to bode well for the industry because it will have even more time to implement this requirement.
Portability refers to telephone subscribers keeping their same telephone number after switching service providers. The Federal Communications Commission has said number portability is essential for competition to develop, while the wireless industry contends wireless number portability is not necessary because competition already exists in the industry.
The wireless industry had been prepared last week to argue the FCC’s rules requiring wireless number portability were enacted improperly and should be reversed. These arguments now are scheduled for mid-January in Denver. This date comes after the Dec. 16 deadline when the FCC must rule on a request from the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association not to enforce wireless number portability rules until after the buildout of personal communications services.
This request would delay implementation for at least five years, at which time the FCC would re-evaluate the competitive market to see if wireless number portability is necessary for competition.
Last month, the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau granted a separate request by CTIA to extend the compliance deadline for wireless number portability from June 30, 1999, to March 31, 2000, but did not address whether the initial rules had been instituted improperly.
Daniel Phythyon, chief of the wireless bureau, said the FCC next would address CTIA’s petition for forbearance of local number portability, which has a statutory deadline of Dec. 16.
Congress established procedures in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that allow entities to ask the FCC to forebear from enforcing rules that have become moot because of competition. The procedures require the FCC to rule on such requests within one year. CTIA filed its petition Dec. 16, 1997.
One option to address the forbearance petition would allow the industry more than the additional nine months to implement wireless number portability but would not give it the five years CTIA seeks.
The problem for the FCC is there is not much data in the record to justify any new date. If the FCC does grant some extension beyond nine months, it is apt to upset the Telecommunications Resellers Association, which do not want any extension. In the debate leading up to the nine-month extension decision, TRA 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.
The wireless industry claims every cell site in the United States must be modified for wireless number portability. Local exchange carriers are currently implementing local number portability in five phases based on metropolitan statistical areas.
The wireless industry is still developing standards for wireless number portability. Standards for analog, Code Division Multiple Access and Time Division Multiple Access are in the balloting process. Standards for Global System for Mobile communications 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 nationwide roaming. The FCC has decreed wireless carriers implement wireless number portability while maintaining nationwide roaming.
The wireless industry is being led in its litigation efforts by Bell Atlantic Mobile, which said in an appeals court brief that the FCC should not have imposed the wireless number portability obligation on CMRS providers because Congress only expected the obligation to be imposed on landline carriers.
BAM has been joined by GTE Services Corp., AirTouch Communications Inc., SBC Communications Inc. and CTIA.
