04-440

CLEC's are still working on the VZ Forbearance petition (04-440) that was granted by order of law. CLEC's have petitioned the FCC for a Motion for expedited order on VZ petition for forbearnce. Excerpted:

By March 20, 2006, the Commission had not issued a wrtten ruling granting or denying the petition on the merits, and instead issued a News Release notifyng the public that "the relief requested by Verizon's petition was deemed granted by operation of law, effective March 19, 2006." The Commission also issued a Joint Statement from two Commissioners - Chairman Martin and Commissioner Tate - explaining that while none of the Commissioners supported granting Verizon the full relief sought in the petition as drafted, Chairman Marin and Commissioner Tate favored granting the petition as limited by Verizon's February 7 Ex Parte..... Neither the News Release, the Joint Statement, nor the separate statements of Commissioners Copps and Adelstein disclosed that the Commission had voted on an order addressing the merits of Verizon's petition. Chairman Martin later acknowledged, however, that the Commission had taken a formal vote on the matter. Chairman Martin stated that "(the Commission. . . by a recorded 2-2 vote, neither granted or denied Verizon's forbearance petiton." Chairman Martin further stated that "(there still is no majority view on the appropriate outcome of Verizon's petition" and that "because there was not (and is not today) a majority view . . . we were unable to take the preferred course of issuing an official written decision."

It's crazy that no decision becomes a default yes. It's irresponsible. But then this is the F-Agency.

In reading the CLEC arguments against all of VZ's petitions, the claim is that there has not been enough fiber penetration in the 6 MSA (06-172). In fact, "XO Communications - one of the nation's largest facilties-based CLECs, with over $6 bilion in network investment - has been able to build directly into only approximately 3,000 buildings out of 6.9 milion nationwide." Well, that's poor allocation of cash and resources. Some of the CLEC issues are their own fault. Each should have picked an MSA and just become king of that area - fiber, lit buildings, etc. Instead, it's more like when the 3 (and later 10) DLEC's - Covad, Rthymns, Northpoint - spent about $2.5B building 3 replicating networks nationwide, instead of splitting it up and not competing against each other. Cooperation would work wonders.

BTW, it wasn't clarified what services are no longer tariffed either:

Should the Commission fail to deny Verizon's petition, the Movants urge the Commission to expressly (via written order) limit its grant of forbearance to the particular types of broadband services and the Title II regulations specified by Verizon in its February 7,2006 ex parte letter. Letter from Edward Shakin, Vice President & Associate General Counsel, Verizon, to Marlene Dortch, Secretary, Federal Communications Commission, WC Docket No. 04-440 (fied Feb. 7, 2006) ("February 7 Ex Parte") The broadband services specified by Verizon include Frame Relay Service, ATM Cell Relay Service, Internet Protocol-Virtual Private Network (IP-VPN) Service, Transparent LAN Service, LAN Extension Service, IntelliLight Broadband Transport, Custom Connect, Verizon Optical Networking, Optical Rubbing Service, and IntellLight Optical Transport Service.