Hurry Up & Wait

It's an annual ritual for sports analysts to review a team's performance at the end of the year, and a review of Team FCC's 1999 record finds no shortage of highlights, lowlights and dropped balls. No review would be complete without a forecast for next season, so we've included a look at what Team FCC might do this year.

CPP: OFF THE BENCH After two years on the bench, calling party pays (CPP) returned to the field. On July 7, the commission released an order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to facilitate the widespread availability of CPP as a service option for subscribers.

For carriers, the FCC's involvement in CPP has pros and cons. On one hand, the FCC can help ensure that LECsprovide CPP-related billing and collection services, without which CPP may not be economically viable. On the other, the NPRM proposals for uniform pricing and notification procedures could result in increased federal and state regulation of carriers. The public-comment cycle ended in October, and an order is expected in the first quarter of 2000.

CALEA: ON THE OFFENSIVE In January, the FCC issued a Further NPRM to determine the capability standards that carriers must meet in order to comply with CALEA. By fall, it issued an order, later adopted as a technical requirement, called the J-STD-025 standard. The FCC also adopted additional requirements, requested by law enforcement. They include providing the government with access to:

* The content of subject-initiated conference calls

* Information identifying the parties to a conference call

* Subject-initiated dialing and signaling information, such as the use of call forwarding, call waiting, call hold, and 3-way calling

* In-band and out-of-band signaling, which includes any audible or visible network message sent to the subject

* A time stamp for all call-identifying information delivered to the government

* Dialed-digit extraction, which is the identity of digits dialed by the subject after connecting to another carrier's service.

Carriers must comply with the J standard by June 30, 2000, and the additional requirements by Sept. 30, 2001. The FCC's rules have been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

CPNI: GETTING SACKED In August, the FCC adopted an order attempting to liberalize CPNI rules by allowing carriers to use CPNI without customer approval to market information services. As part of this order, the commission also eliminated its requirement for the use of software to track CPNI use and prevent unauthorized use.

Days after the order was announced, however, an appeals court sacked the initiative by ruling that the FCC's rules violated constitutional protections and vacating all of those rules. The commission continues to seek a rehearing on this issue, but the court has yet to respond. Meanwhile, carriers are left on the sidelines to await the court's next move. If the FCC doesn't succeed in the courts, it may well have to initiate a new CPNI rulemaking proceeding.

E-911: GETTING TOUGH In mid-year, the FCC started tackling a variety of issues affecting carriers' E-911 obligations.

* In May, it issued an order that analog or dual-mode phones operating in analog mode be able to complete a 911 call by using a carrier other than the caller's preferred carrier.

* In September, to accommodate handset-based location solutions, it adopted new rules that allow phase-in periods for meeting Phase II E-911 requirements and revised its standards for location accuracy and reliability. In October, it sought information regarding standards for verifying compliance with these new accuracy standards.

* In November, the FCC removed the prerequisite that an E-911 cost-recovery mechanism be in place. It still requires that the public safety answering point have its own funding and necessary technical capability prior to obtaining E-911 service.

NUMBERING: CALLING TIME OUT In March, the FCC gave the wireless industry a time out until November 2002 in implementing LNP. In the meantime, the FCC has initiated a rulemaking proceeding to consider non-LNP-based number-resource conservation methods including:

* Administrative standards to strengthen or supplement existing industry NXX-code allocation guidelines

* Thousands-block number pooling to allow service providers to receive numbers in amounts smaller than the current 10,000

* Rate-center consolidation

* Mandatory 10-digit dialing.

The commission also sought comment on the feasibility of moving to a pricing mechanism for allocating numbering resources and traditional area-code relief methodologies, including splits, overlays and boundary realignments. Action is expected by March 2000.

Meanwhile, several state regulatory commissions petitioned the FCC to give them certain numbering administration functions, including number pooling, NXX-code reclamation, reporting and auditing, usage thresholds and sequential numbering. Petitions by California, Florida, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin have been granted. CTIA praised the FCC for being sensitive to the importance of numbering to the industry and for its responsiveness to wireless carriers' concerns.

CONGRESS: AIR BALL In July, Sens. Mike DeWine (R-O) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced two bills to limit the FCC's role in approving mergers. DeWine's bill would have tightly restricted the amount of time the FCC has to review a merger and issue a decision, while McCain's bill would have eliminated the FCC's review of the competitive aspects of mergers altogether.

Neither bill came before the Senate for consideration during this congressional session. Perhaps spurred by industry criticism and by congressional efforts to bench Team FCC, the commission took steps to be more responsive. Whether DeWine and McCain will try to revive their bills when Congress reconvenes this month may well depend more on the political climate in 2000 than on the FCC's performance.

Although Team FCC faced stiff opposition this season from the courts and the Senate, it still managed to forward the ball on many challenging issues. Unfortunately, unlike most teams, this one doesn't have an official off-season in which to heal its wounds and catch its breath. Instead, it must don its helmet and take the field. The year 2000 will prove more challenging than 1999: The FCC will have to address 1999's unresolved issues while tackling new issues created by continually expanding and converging wireless and wired technologies. If the wireless industry wants to avoid the FCC's full-court press of its latest policy initiatives, it can't drop afford to drop the ball now.