FCC workshop participants: Interconnection critical to PSTN phase-out

Before the traditional phone network can be phased out, steps should be taken to ensure that the networks replacing it are interoperable, said several stakeholders who participated in an FCC workshop convened yesterday to explore issues associated with a PSTN phase-out—an idea floated by AT&T a couple of years ago that is now gaining momentum.

Ensuring interoperability is no easy task, considering that the tightly integrated and monolithic phone network of yesteryear has been gradually transitioning to a more competitive and fragmented marketplace. Walter Johnson of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology framed the issue in a question at yesterday’s workshop. “How do [we] create a common language when so many [parties] bring a piece of the solution to the table?” he asked.

“This is the critical question,” answered Harold Feld of consumer group Public Knowledge. “It starts with interconnection.”

Interconnection details
Digging in to the problem more deeply, Johnson noted that before service providers can move to all-IP communications and interconnection, they will need some type of database or addressing scheme.

In an apparent reference to initiatives such as ENUM (CP: Tekelec, Verisign simplify ENUM sharing), AT&T executive Brian Daly noted that some IP interconnection standards are in place but more work needs to be done there.

But not everyone agreed that industry parties would be able to reach a consensus on such standards on their own. “There is a tension between platform providers and network providers”—all of whom are trying to monetize the Internet experience, said Feld. “If we leave it all to the market unsupervised, you will get a patchwork of results.”

Feld said he was not calling for “government seizure of the standards process” but he noted that “the FCC leads best through saying what [the industry] should be looking at.”

Also participating in today’s workshop, Steven K. Perry, head of the Rural Cellular Association, urged the FCC to put firm requirements in place for service providers to interconnect with one another using IP. In so doing, he said regulators can avoid creating an urban/rural digital divide.

Public safety interoperability
Interoperability also could be important in enabling public safety and first responders to gain the maximum benefit from advanced wireless and IP communications networks, several workshop participants said. Some of their comments appeared not to bode well for the idea of a nationwide broadband wireless network dedicated to public safety—an idea that some parties have been trying to push through Congress for more than a year (CP: Proposed Rockefeller bill would give D-block to public safety).

Jon Peha of Carnegie Mellon University, who noted that he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of his employer, noted that commercial LTE networks can support priority roaming, thereby enabling first responders to use public wireless networks--perhaps as an alternative to having their own dedicated network. “On average, paying commercial rates for roaming can save . . . money,” said Peha.

Noting, however, that a wide-scale emergency such as a hurricane could be costly using the roaming option, Peha proposed a cap on roaming charges for the public safety community.

It’s worth noting, though, that the LTE spectrum band has been divided up into several smaller bands and today’s LTE end user devices do not operate at all of those bands. Before Peha’s ideas could be implemented, additional development may be needed to create mobile devices capable of operating at all of the requisite frequencies.

Another workshop participant who sees big benefits for first responders as a result of interoperable commercial mobile wireless networks was Stagg Newman of Pisgah Comm Consulting, who advocated equipping emergency vehicles with picocells and directional antennas, thereby maximizing the ability to connect to a commercial wireless network, even in areas that may have minimal coverage.

More to come
The FCC has scheduled a second PSTN transition workshop focused on transition economics and implementation issues for December 14 and has lined up several participants who should help contribute to a lively discussion. These include Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America and Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, along with several service provider representatives and academics from MIT and several other universities.