Verizon lands LD approval in Delaware, New Hampshire

Verizon Communications has received approval from the FCC to provide interLATA service in Delaware and New Hampshire under Section 271 of the Telecom Act.

According to Verizon, competitive carriers control 49,300 access lines in Delaware and 144,000 lines in New Hampshire.

Delaware and New Hampshire are the 9th and 10th states for which Verizon has won 271 approval. The others are New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey and Maine. Verizon currently has an application pending to provide long distance service in Virginia. The carrier is the nation’s fourth largest provider of long-distance service, with about 9 million customers in 46 states.

FCC Chairman Michael Powell acknowledged in a prepared statement that the applications raised questions regarding the pricing of unbundled network elements, specifically whether incumbent carriers can demonstrate their compliance by aggregating the non-loop elements as opposed to evaluating them on an individual basis.

Powell said the aggregation method was appropriate for the Delaware and New Hampshire applications because “we know that competitors invariably do not purchase the unbundled switching element separately from other elements, such as shared transport. … With this in mind, I believe that the overall structure of the [Telecom Act] supports a decision that supports this marketplace reality.”

However, FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin, while supporting the applications, said in a prepared statement that Section 252 of the Act requires that prices of network elements be based on the cost of provisioning the elements. He pointed out that the FCC, for this reason, has examined the switching element independent of transport when reviewing other 271 applications.

“I believe the better reading of the statute is that the rate for each network element must comport with Congress’ pricing directive,” Martin said.

He added that he supported the application in New Hampshire because competitors in that state, “are only purchasing” switching with transport.

“In another situation in which competitors were purchasing unbundled switching or another network element on its own, we would need to scrutinize more closely the trade-offs among the element rates,” Martin said.