Access Charge Reform; Price Cap Performance Review for Local Exchange Carriers; Petition of US West Communications, Inc. for Forbearance From Regulation as a Dominant Carrier in the Phoenix, Arizona MSA; Interexchange Carrier Purchases of Switched Access Services Offered by Competitive Local Exchange Carriers

Zusammenfassung

This document proposes to revise the rules that govern the provision of interstate access services by those incumbent local exchange carriers subject to price cap regulation to advance the pro- competitive, de-regulatory national policies embodied in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The document seeks comment on: Pricing flexibility and geographic deaveraging of rates for services in the common line and traffic-sensitive baskets; the rate structure for the local switching service category of the traffic-sensitive basket and for tandem-switched transport and whether capacity-based charges, rather than per-minute charges, better reflect the manner in which the underlying costs of these services are incurred; adjustments to the traffic-sensitive and trunking price cap index formulae for these charges so that price cap LECs do not enjoy all the benefits of growth if they have not been exclusively responsible for creating that growth; market-based or other approaches to ensure that rates charged by competitive carriers are just and reasonable.