We are pleased that our industry has finally received the
long awaited review of the sweeping Act of 1996. Seven years
ago the intention was to foster competition, and to provide a
stimulus for growth and the advancement of new services within
the industry. We are extremely pleased with the affirmation of
the UNE platform, which will encourage competition and provide
consumers and small businesses with additional options and
savings. This is what the Act was intended for. The UNE
platform put forth in the Order seems to be a temporary
solution at best, however, and once many carriers have
migrated over to it, it may be difficult to move them off of
it.
The ruling by the commission as it relates to broadband
access and the availability of components for wireless
carriers holds back the two main growth areas in our industry
today.
The future of the industry for both service providers and
consumers depends on the deployment of newer packetized
networks and advanced services.
Under the Order consumers will now be limited in most cases
to a single provider of these services, when and if they are
deployed at all, because competitors will not have the
required access means to serve the consumer or to compete with
equal product offerings. By removing broadband access, you
have also removed a key factor in our economy, which would in
fact stimulate the growth and expansion of new technologies, a
growth we experienced with the original Act of 1996.
We commend the FCC for its balanced approach in providing
this review, but also feel that the advancement of technology
will now be stifled under the provisions of this Order. Instead of removing these items, incentives could have been
put in place for providing their components.
The FCC has many additional items on their agenda in the
near future to address, such as Access Charges and VoIP, and
we look forward to additional reforms to foster competition
and growth.
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Shawn Lewis is President & CEO of Caerus, Inc.
He wrote the patent for the first softswitch and SS7 Media
Gateway and was the co-founder of XCOM Technologies, an early developer
of softswitch technology that was acquired by Level 3
Communications. Caerus is the parent company of Volo
Communications, which provides voice, data and enhanced
services to RBOCs, CLECs, IXCs and end users, utilizing both
TDM and Packet Technology.
