Section 251 and the Commission's rules
On August 8, 1996, the Commission adopted the first
collocation rules designed to implement section 251(c)(6) of the
Communications Act of 1934, as amended, (``the Act''), 47 U.S.C. §
251(c)(6). Section 251(c)(6) of the Act obligates incumbent local exchange
carriers (LECs) to provide, ``on rates, terms, and conditions that are just,
reasonable, and nondiscriminatory, for physical collocation of equipment
necessary for interconnection or access to unbundled network elements.'' The
collocation requirement allows competing LECs to place their equipment on the
incumbent LEC's premises. On March 31, 1999, the Commission issued additional
collocation rules in the Advanced Services First Report and Order
(``the Order''). The Order requires, among other things, that
incumbent LECs offer cageless collocation arrangements, whereby a competing
LEC obtains physical collocation space without having to build a protective
cage around its own equipment. The Commission codified the cageless
collocation requirement at section 51.323(k) of its rules, 47 C.F.R. §
51.323(k). Section 51.323(k) became effective on June 1, 1999. Competing
LECs filed numerous applications for cageless collocation arrangements with GTE.
FCC/GTE Consent Decree
Later in 1999, the Enforcement Bureau received
information from competing LECs alleging that GTE had refused to allow them to
collocate using a cageless arrangement until August 1, 1999, two months after
the effective date of Section 51.323(k). The Enforcement Bureau sent a Letter
of Inquiry to GTE directing it to respond to these allegations. In its
responses, GTE admitted that from June 1, 1999 to August 1, 1999, it denied
and placed in a ``hold status'' 51 cageless collocation requests submitted by
various competing LECs. GTE argued in its responses that, notwithstanding the
effective date of the rule, a sentence in the Order directing incumbent
LECs to offer the alternative collocation arrangements ``as soon as possible''
allowed it to defer offering cageless arrangements beyond the effective date
of the rules. According to GTE, it was not required to consider cageless
collocation requests before August 1, 1999, which, it asserted, represented
the earliest date on which it could accept and process such requests.
On July 31, 2000, the Commission and GTE entered into a
Consent Decree terminating the Enforcement Bureau's investigation. GTE, which
by this time was a subsidiary of Verizon Communications, agreed to make a $2.7
million voluntary contribution to the U.S. Treasury and to expedite
improvements in its collocation provisioning. The Commission, in its order
granting GTE's merger with Bell Atlantic, required GTE to meet specific
performance measurements regarding the percentage of competing LEC collocation
applications responded to and completed on time by GTE. If GTE failed to meet
these performance measurements, it agreed to begin making voluntary payments
to the U.S. Treasury beginning nine months after the merger closing date.
With this Consent Decree, GTE agreed to reduce from nine months to six months
the amount of time after which it would make these voluntary payments.
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