Electronic loop provisioning advanced as telecom cure

A Boston University economics professor, speaking on behalf of CLEC-friendly Voices for Choices, said in a press briefing today that the FCC should mandate electronic loop provisioning (ELP) as a means of eliminating the need for the unbundled network element platform.

Laurence Kotlikoff, economics department chairman, said cutovers in the long-distance sector could be executed within five minutes of notification using ELP. He added that it is a far different situation in the local market, where cutovers are a manual process requiring a truck roll.

Competitive carriers have stated that UNE-P is the only reasonable option for entering the local market given the amount of time it typically takes incumbent carriers to execute cutovers. In a letter sent to the FCC this week, Jim Cicconi, general counsel for Voices for Choices-member AT&T, said the carrier would be unable to serve residential and small business customers without access to the platform, “in the face of the manual hot cut process,” and would be relegated to serving large business customers at “the DS1 level or above.”

Kotlikoff added that it would be “relatively inexpensive” for an incumbent to convert ELP and predicted that all incumbents could transition to the technology within a year. He said ELP would eliminate the need for UNE-P.

“UNE-P should only be maintained for as long as it takes to get ELP implemented,” he said. “The FCC should impose this condition on the incumbents if it decides to remove UNE-P.”

In addition, Kotlikoff classified as “economically backwards” the RBOCs’ claims that UNE-P is retarding their ability to invest in networks. He said competition stimulates lower prices, lower prices stimulate demand, and demand generates revenues, some of which the RBOCs would need to be put back into their products in order to stay ahead of the competition.

“The path to getting more investment is not through restricting competition, but by increasing it,” Kotlikoff said.

However, the RBOCs maintain that they do not have a problem with competitors accessing unbundled network elements – which is a requirement of the Telecom Act – but do not want to provide the entire platform, which was a creation of the FCC. They also object to providing UNEs at prices that are below their provisioning costs, which they maintain the TELRIC pricing formula requires them to do.