For Immediate Release

Press Contact - Bryan Tramont 202-418-2000

Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated the Commission's order approving the transfer of Commission licenses from Ameritech Corp. to SBC Communications Inc. (Association of Communications Enterprises v. FCC, D.C. Circuit Docket No. 99-1441, decided January 9, 2001). The Court determined that the order impermissibly allowed the merged company to avoid section 251(c)(4)'s resale obligations for advanced services. I dissented from the SBC-Ameritech order on precisely this ground, pointing out that this condition, as well as the other conditions imposed by the order, was of highly questionable legal validity.

I am pleased that the D.C. Circuit reached the correct result here. Regrettably, however, the court's vacatur of the SBC-Ameritech order is yet another example of what has become a run-of-the-mill occurrence at this agency. In important case after important case, the FCC has been reversed on appeal. The result has been that the agency finds itself grappling with precisely the same issues for months, if not years, after it has released an initial order. A case in point: the reciprocal compensation controversy. The Commission released an initial order regarding this issue in February of 1999, which the D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded in March 2000. Now, nearly two years after it first addressed the issue, this agency has yet to resolve the matter finally.

In these cases, to reach some policy goal it thinks desirable, the Commission has taken positions that have been in great tension - if not directly at odds - with the 1996 Act's key provisions. What seems to have been lost on the agency is that it might better serve the public interest if it adopted policies and rules that were consistent with statute in the first place. Had it done so, the Commission would have long ago moved on to other business. And providers of telecommunications services would be operating under a more stable set of rules today.