February 2003
Wireless Industry Challenges Number Portability Mandate
The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) announced a federal policy agenda for 2003 in early January that centers largely on “fighting burdensome and unfunded mandates,” including the FCC's wireless local number portability (LNP) requirement. Under the LNP rules, scheduled to take effect this November, wireless carriers must make changes to their networks to permit consumers to keep their phone numbers when they change carriers. CTIA believes that it will cost the wireless industry billions of dollars to implement LNP.
While there have been different media reports regarding CTIA’s position on wireless LNP, a January 16th letter from its President, Tom Wheeler, to the FCC provides a good overview of CTIA’s thinking and strategies. In that letter, Wheeler states that CTIA believes LNP needlessly burdens wireless carriers and their customers. He also references CTIA’s pending Court of Appeals challenge arguing that Congress did not extend the LNP mandate to wireless carriers, and that absent such Congressional authority, the FCC lacks the statutory basis to impose LNP on wireless carriers. He acknowledges that “until the Court rules in our favor, wireless carriers remain bound by the FCC’s mandate to support LNP no later than November 24 of this year.”
CTIA points out that wireline carriers must support LNP, including “inter-modal” porting to wireless carriers. Wheeler states that “[i]f the wireless industry also must support LNP, wireless carriers believe the Commission has an obligation to insure that wireline customers have not just an inchoate right, but the actual ability to port their number to a wireless carrier.” He adds that “[u]nfortunately, as wireless carriers begin to work towards LNP implementation, they have detected resistance to this notion as the LECs remain bound to rate center boundaries and have asserted the need to negotiate new interconnection agreements as a condition precedent to inter-modal porting.”
This “wireline-wireless integration” issue has been stalemated at the Commission for years, according to Wheeler. He adds that inter-modal porting is likely to remain deadlocked unless the Commission clearly asserts that LECs must port numbers to wireless carriers without regard to rate center or interconnection issues. To spur the FCC to do so, CTIA filed a petition last week asking that the Commission declare that a wireline carrier must allow its customers to keep their telephone numbers when they transfer service to a wireless carrier.
Currently, wireline phone companies are required to provide LNP only within the same "rate center." Wireless carriers typically cover several rate centers, but the FCC has never resolved whether wireline carriers can restrict a customer's ability to port his telephone numbers to a wireless carrier whose service area covers the wireline carrier’s rate center. Figures compiled by CTIA suggest that only one out of every eight wireline consumers will be able to port their number to a wireless carrier if the wireline companies are allowed to restrict porting.
"Number portability is as unnecessary in the competitive wireless market as socks on a fish -- but the FCC has made the situation even worse. Despite pro-competition claims, in about 90 percent of the cases, consumers won’t be able to take their wireline telephone number to a wireless phone,” said Wheeler.
On January 27th, the FCC issued a public notice, inviting Comments on CTIA’s petition. Comments are due February 26, 2003. Reply comments are due March 13, 2003.
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