LECs slammed with more accusations

Once again, incumbent local exchange carriers stand accused of obstructing competition. Three incidents last week accentuated the importance that the LECs' internal workings play when competitors want a piece of the action.

MCI took the first step when it claimed that U S West's Web-based system for switching customers to MCI's local service failed to work. MCI asked the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to postpone its July 31 entry into the local residential market because of the ordering system's alleged inadequacies and vulnerability to hackers.

The customer order form disappears from the computer screen as soon as it is completed and must be manually keyed into the two carriers' systems three times, increasing chances of error, said Bill Levis, director of Western public policy for MCI. U S West faxes order confirmations to MCI, but the faxes don't say whether U S West's customer information is the same as MCI's, Levis said.

An electronic data interface would solve most of the problems because it would let MCI see and copy customers' records in U S West's system, he said.

U S West countered that customer information travels over a secure intranet that requires passwords to pass through a firewall, said Lynn Notarianni, director of interconnection system planning for U S West Communications. Notarianni accused MCI of failing to dedicate technical teams to help develop the interfaces it wanted.

The Federal Communications Commission stirred up the second issue by ruling that LECs are overcharging new competitors to collocate their network equipment in the incumbents' central offices. The incumbents must file new tariffs within 45 days and submit plans to issue refunds to their customers for excessive collocation charges imposed between December 1994 and June 1997.

"Some incumbent LECs have charged us for space in central offices in the middle of cornfields at rates far higher than we would have to pay for equal space in the Trump Towers in Manhattan," said J. Manning Lee, vice president of regulatory affairs for Teleport Communications Group, a CLEC.

Finally, AT&T last week offered its Direct Link customers in New York the ability to receive inbound local calls over their dedicated digital connections, simultaneously conceding that the limited rollout was partly the result of tough negotiations with incumbent LECs.