The association will file its comments later today as part of the FCC’s proceeding to consider Bell Atlantic’s application under Section 271 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act to enter the long distance market in New York. The association noted that 23 of its member companies are providing or preparing to provide competitive local services in New York.

"CompTel’s members will welcome Bell Atlantic’s participation in the broad markets to be made available by the Act’s market-opening provisions, when and if the conditions of local competition are fair and the playing field is level. Although CompTel is encouraged by the progress to date, a faithful application of Section 271 requires the Commission to deny the Bell Atlantic application," said H. Russell Frisby, Jr., CompTel’s President. "Very real problems remain – problems that result from Bell Atlantic policies that restrict competition; from inadequate or unreliable ordering and provisioning capabilities; and from incomplete remedies for non-performance," said Frisby.

CompTel cited the following areas in which Bell Atlantic’s application falls short of complying with the Section 271 checklist:

1. Bell Atlantic still imposes unlawful restrictions on access to combinations of unbundled network elements, including "UNE platform" and the Enhanced Extended Link (EEL);
2. Bell Atlantic still is unable to provide local loops and transport trunking reliably or in a commercially acceptable manner; and
3. Bell Atlantic imposes unlawful and discriminatory restrictions on DSL loops and loop qualification information, limiting access to certain types of high-speed services and hindering the deployment of advanced technology to consumers.

In addition to their checklist compliance deficiencies, CompTel outlined a post-271 Anti-Backsliding Blueprint. Specifically, CompTel proposed:

• Apply matching federal guarantees of performance in addition to state remedies.
• Apply additional remedies if Bell Atlantic’s performance is significantly worse than the CLEC-specific and industry-wide benchmarks.

• Repeated failures to meet required performance measures, e.g. failure to meet any performance metric twice in any three consecutive reporting periods, or three times in any six consecutive reporting periods – should be deemed prima facie evidence in complaint proceedings of a violation of Bell Atlantic’s interconnection agreements.
• Certain failures to comply with basic obligations under Section 251 should also constitute prima facie evidence of liability to CLECs. For example, failure to respond to an interconnection request within 14 days shall be deemed to be bad faith by Bell Atlantic. Similarly, failure to provide collocation within the time frames specified in the Collocation Order will be deemed a breach of its obligation under Section 251 [c] [2] to provide interconnection.

• Repeated failures to meet any performance metric on an industry-wide basis should trigger a performance improvement evaluation under the supervision of the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau.
• Significant non-compliance with performance metrics should trigger forfeiture proceedings with substantial ($1 million or more) penalties. Each day under the reporting period should be deemed a separate event subject to the forfeiture authority of the agency.