Back Office - INTEROFFICE TRUNKING

Posted 10/2000

Back Office

INTEROFFICE TRUNKING:
SLEEPER LITIGATION ISSUE OF THE YEAR
By Jonathan E. Canis

Jonathan E. Canis Attorney at Law Kelley Drye & Warren LLP

Among the big disputes between CLECs and ILECs, all the headlines recently have been taken up by the disputes over reciprocal compensation, collocation and provisioning of unbundled loops. Over the past year, however, a problem of similar magnitude has been quietly developing without much attention at all: ILEC provisioning of interoffice trunking--the high capacity transport facilities that haul traffic from the ILEC to the CLEC networks and vice versa. Some of the problems associated with trunking are illus-trated in a complaint filed by Intermedia Communications Inc. (www.intermedia.com) against BellSouth Corp. (www.bellsouth.com) in a federal court in Florida. (Full disclosure: I represent Intermedia in this case, and am not a disinterested party.)

The Intermedia complaint contains several charges, but principally focuses on inbound trunking--BellSouth's duty to provide trunks to carry traffic that originates on the BellSouth network to Intermedia. This form of interconnection hasn't generated much attention in the past because it doesn't involve a CLEC placing an order for a service or unbundled network element from the ILEC. These arrangements--in which the CLEC submits a service order, and the ILEC either provides the service on time or doesn't--are fairly straightforward, and have been litigated extensively before state regulatory commissions and the FCC. Inbound trunking is more subtle, however, because it involves the ILEC's actions in building its own network to carry its own traffic. In this case, an ILEC can disrupt a competitive CLEC's operations simply by not building its network fast enough, and by not planning to expand its trunking capacity to meet expected demand. This failure of an ILEC to take care of its own network can result in "all circuits are busy" announcements when customers on the ILEC and CLEC networks try to call each other. This is particularly frustrating to the CLEC, whose customers receive unacceptable service even though the CLEC's network is operating perfectly.

The main tool CLECs have in avoiding this problem is accurate traffic forecasts. Most interconnection agreements require both ILEC and CLEC to provide quarterly or semi-annual reports showing the amount of traffic they expect to generate to and from specific carrier offices. Both carriers are then obligated to provide adequate trunking to handle the anticipated traffic flows. In the Intermedia case, a central issue that the court will consider is whether BellSouth adequately responded to the traffic forecasts it received. The Intermedia case raises a number of other major issues, including:

Does the Telecom Act of 1996 affect a CLEC's ability to bring suit under the Sherman Act and other antitrust laws?

Can acting in bad faith during interconnection negotiations mean an ILEC is guilty of fraud?

What kind of damages are available from a court if an ILEC fails to process service orders on time?

A decision in the Florida case is not expected until next year.

Jonathan E. Canis writes a monthly column on regulatory issues. He is an attorney at law with Kelley Drye & Warren LLP and can be reached at canis@kelleydrye.com.

NYPSC Addresses CLEC-to-CLEC Customer Handoffs
By Kim Sunderland

The New York Public Service Commission (www.dps.state.ny.us) again is leading the way on an emerging regulatory issue that is poised to become more visible within the next few years--the migration of customers between CLECs.

While the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and related regulations address ILEC-to-CLEC relationships, relationships between CLECs have remained outside the regulatory arena--until now. With more new carriers coming into the marketplace, customers will increasingly change from one competitive carrier to another. So, as with the ILEC/CLEC relationship, the ability of the customer's original carrier to hand off that customer to the new carrier becomes of paramount importance.

The experts involved in the New York proceeding--70 are listed on the group's active party list--collectively are referred to as the OSS/Operations Collaborative Working Group. They are working with the project's top boss, Administrative Law Judge Eleanor Stein. In August, Stein studied the proposed CLEC-to-CLEC End User Migration Guidelines, which she says "moves a long way forward the project of defining the guidelines and protocols needed to ensure a fair, consumer-driven and workable competitive local telecommunications market for New Yorkers."

Work group members expect to have a proposal to the PSC and hope to gain approval by next year. The work group also will recommend that the PSC issue these guidelines to the industry.

An initial draft of the proposal includes "migration principles," or basic codes of conduct, such as that an end user's privacy be respected by all CLECs, and that carriers work together in good faith to minimize and/or avoid any problems for the migrating end user. According to work group documents, also being drafted is a new migration principle specifying that a carrier cannot impede a customer's choice to change carriers. A category of "migration responsibilities" in the draft deals with procedural issues such as the process for handing off a customer.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines