Fcc Regulations: Evaluating the Missoula Plan

FCC Regulations: Evaluating the Missoula Plan

Robin Dumas

University of Redlands

INFT 610: LEGAL, POLICY, AND ETHICAL ISSUES FOR TECHNOLOGY

Brian H. Kurbjeweit, JD

October 16, 2007

Evaluating the Missoula Plan

With the continually evolving infrastructure of our communications environment, attention needs to be paid to reforming the associated regulations and bringing them up to date with the technologies now in use. At one time America’s telephony infrastructure was a simple narrow-band environment. Today it has evolved into an infrastructure relying on broadband connectivity to the internet, cell phones, and satellites. While this transition provides the promise of economic growth and consumer benefits, the reformation of the regulations has proved a daunting task. The evolution of our electronic communications stands in the balance, for without reform America’s telecommunications providers could find they lack adequate resources to maintain their existing infrastructure, and even less prepared to provide new broadband networks to their customers, especially in rural areas (Rural-Alliance.org 2006).

Even though the Communications Act of 1934 was amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, problems still remain with the existing regulations. So, hundreds of telecommunications industry participants—holding widely divergent interests—joined together to propose a plan for intercarrier compensation reform. This plan is known as the Missoula Plan.

Background on �The Missoula Plan’

On July 24, 2006 the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Task Force filed the Missoula Plan with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC allowed comments to be filed until September 2006, then extended the deadline until December 2006. Then, in February 2007, reply comments were filed by 63 parties including 20 state commissions. It is expected that the FCC will make some key decisions sometime this year. This paper will discuss some of the most controversial areas of The Missoula Plan.

Today’s intercarrier compensation involves a patch-work of inconsistent rules resulting in vastly divergent rates for any given call—depending upon the type of carrier that the call originated from and whether or not the call crosses state boundaries. Many feel that these and other �regulatory anachronisms’

will erode traditional sources of network cost recovery, facilitate arbitrage opportunities, and even impose extreme litigation costs and uncertainty in investments (Rural-Alliance.org 2006). The main objective of the Missoula Plan is to unify these disparate compensation and access charges across all types of traffic, various technologies, and different carriers. It also proposes solutions for dealing with Voice over IP (VoIP) and phantom traffic. The Missoula Plan provides an industry solution to a truly difficult problem. In short, this plan provides for a restructuring of the existing intercarrier compensation framework that will allow rural carriers the revenues that are necessary to enable them to continue to provide and maintain network functionalities as well as allowing them to provision universally available basic and advanced services (GVNW 2007).

The reply comments debate issues that remained unresolved in the first round of comments—focusing on consumer benefits and the competitive impact. Some of the points of contention will be discussed in more detail in this paper include the following areas: Intercarrier Compensation Framework, Impact on Customers, Interconnection Framework, and Preemption and Preemption of State Authority.

Two areas that are not as highly disputed are �Phantom Traffic’ and �Treatment of Existing Interconnection Agreements’. Phantom Traffic is comprised of calls that cannot be properly billed by intermediate and terminating carriers because they do not contain sufficient signaling information. The Missoula Plan also minimizes disputes about existing interconnection agreements by providing clear, comprehensive rules that all carriers will agree to follow. This paper will not discuss these relatively undisputed areas.

Analyzing Areas of Concern

Intercarrier Compensation Framework

There is still quite a bit of concern on whether or not the Missoula Plan has achieved its goal of unifying intercarrier compensation rates. In fact, it can be argued that the plan simply replaces