FCC Adopts New Collocation Rules

Communications Today, July 13, 2001

By Rodney L. Pringle, rpringle@pbimedia.com

WASHINGTON - Maybe Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell has a soft spot in his heart for competitive local exchange carriers, after all.

Yesterday, Powell and his peers approved new rules that will give CLECs slightly more access to incumbent local exchange carriers' facilities for collocating their equipment.

The new policy includes:

* Allowing competitors to place multifunctional equipment in the central offices of the incumbent carriers if the primary purpose of the equipment is to interconnect or access local lines, and its size is reasonable.

* Requiring incumbents to allow competitors to collocate switching and routing equipment, but not traditional circuit switches, which are larger than the newer pieces of equipment.

* Eliminating the requirement that ILECs allow competitive carriers to choose the physical space where they want to collocate; the ILECs must now allocate the space in a nondiscriminatory manner.

"We're hopeful that the resolution here resolves the [collocation] issues," said Dorothy Attwood, head of the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau.

The commission's action yesterday follows a federal court ruling last year that overturned portions of the agency's collocation rules. The commission had adopted the policy in response to charges that many ILECs were improperly delaying collocation arrangements, making collocations more expensive or precluding CLECs entirely from locating their equipment at ILEC facilities.

Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out FCC rules that required ILECs to let competitors place equipment in their central offices even if it was unrelated to interconnecting or accessing parts of the local lines.

Jonathan Askin, general counsel for the Association of Local Telecommunications Services, a trade association representing CLECs, told Communications Today that the commission's decision represented "a banner day for the CLEC industry."

"The most important thing we got was regulatory certainty," Askin said. "We are thrilled that the FCC adopted this order."

Lawrence E. Sarjeant, vice president of regulatory affairs and general counsel for the United States Telecom Association, the primary trade group representing the ILECs, said his organization is disappointed with the commission's action based on the information it has received so far.

"It appears to unnecessarily expand the obligations of incumbent local exchange carriers," Sarjeant said. "We look forward to seeing the text of the order to fully understand how the commission justified its action in light of the instructions from the D.C. Circuit Court."

The Bottom Line

The commission's action is a brief respite from the onslaught of bad news CLECs have received lately. Still, unless the economy heads upwards and the capital markets become friendly, many CLECs will continue their downward spiral. >TK Nortel [NT]: British Telecom [BTY]: