The Consumer Federation of America published an open letter to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain and the panel's ranking Democrat, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings urging law makers to block a draft proposal currently circulating inside the FCC that would lift restrictions on incumbent service providers. The group said the shift in policy, which reportedly is now backed by FCC chairman Michael Powell, would "turn back the clock and promote monopolies in local phone markets." The CFA argues that Powell's draft proposal unlawfully rewrites important provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 -- specifically, section 271, which requires that the Bell companies provide competitors unbundled access to the UNE-Platform of loops, transport and switching if they want to provide long distance services. Now that the FCC has largely granted the Bells entry into the long distance market, the CFA believes that the Bells should not be relieved of their legal obligation to provide reasonably priced wholesale access to competitors.
http://www.consumerfed.org
- Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that FCC Chairman Michael Powell began circulating a draft plan that would gradually eliminate requirements that incumbent carriers provide their competitors with wholesale access to their local networks.
http://www.convergedigest.com/regulatory/regulatoryarticle.asp?ID=5954 - The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation will hold a hearing on the State of Competition in the Telecommunications Industry on Tuesday, 14-January-2003 at 9:30 a.m. EST. The tentative witness list includes each of the five FCC Commissioners, beginning with FCC Chairman, Michael K. Powell. Live audio coverage of the hearing will be available online.
http://capitolhearings.org/
