FCC To Tackle Collocation Issues

Communications Today, July 12, 2001

By Rodney L. Pringle, rpringle@pbimedia.com

If there's one thing the competitive local exchange carrier industry doesn't need it's more bad news. Still, the industry could get a small dose from the Federal Communications Commission today.

The commission is scheduled to make changes to its rules concerning collocation obligations of incumbent local exchange carriers to competitors.

Last year, the commission adopted the new policy in response to charges that many ILECs were improperly delaying collocation arrangements, making collocation more expensive or precluding CLECs entirely from locating their equipment at ILEC facilities.

The adopted rules included:

*Requiring ILECs to expand their collocation offerings to include cageless and adjacent collocation;

*Precluding ILECs from imposing unreasonable minimum space requirements on CLECs;

*Requiring ILECs to spread the cost of preparing a premises for collocation among potential collocators rather than making the first CLEC company to the facility pay for all site preparation charges.

Last August, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that certain parts of the commission's policy were unconstitutional and ordered the commission to come back with alternatives.

Rules that the court declared as unconstitutional were:

*Requiring ILECs to permit CLEC equipment that provided for functions in addition to interconnection and access to unbundled network elements;

*Requiring ILECs to permit collocating carriers to interconnect their equipment with other collocating carriers through cross connections;

*Allowing the requesting carrier to select its physical collocation space and precluding the incumbent from making the CLECs use separate or isolated rooms or floors.

FCC spokesman Michael Balmoris told Communications Today that the commission's action today will focus on changing the minimum space requirements for physical collocation, issues relating to collocation at remote ILEC sites and on whether the rules should facilitate line sharing and subloop unbundling.

The commission also is seeking feedback on whether it should adopt a national policy limiting the period for which potential collocation space can be reserved for future use.

The Bottom Line

Any change giving ILECs more control to determine when and where CLECs can collocate to their facilities isn't good for competitive carriers. Expect CLECs to take another small hit today at a time when a sluggish economy and closed capital markets already has the industry punch-drunk. >TK AT&T [T]: Comcast [CCZ]: Time Warner Entertainment [TWE]: AOL Time Warner [AOL]: