Washington, D.C. -- Applauding state commissions for the aggressively pro-competitive stances that most of them have adopted in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, H. Russell Frisby, Jr., president of CompTel/ACTA and former Chairman of the Maryland Public Service Commission called upon state commissioners attending the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners' (NARUC) Winter Meeting here to "stay the competitive course" in opening up local exchange markets to competition and in reviewing applications by incumbent monopolies to enter the long-distance market.

CompTel/ACTA was formed recently by the combination of the Competitive Telecommunications Association (CompTel) and America's Carriers Telecommunication Association (ACTA).

"Despite the best efforts of the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) monopolies to confuse the issue, local competition is essential to ensure that millions of residential and small business customers can access better, more cost-efficient services," Frisby said, adding that "competition clearly accelerates the deployment of advanced services, creates new jobs, and fosters economic expansion."

"Interestingly, competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) need the same things from the monopoly local exchange companies that their own customers do: that is, choice, fair pricing, and service quality. The Texas Commission was correct when it noted that CLECs should be treated by the monopoly companies as 'customers,'" he said.

Frisby also noted that state and federal regulators must work together to support the principles of forward-looking pricing because it is ultimately in the best interests of customers who want the widest choices at competitive rates. "I suggest that before one accepts the notion that rate rebalancing is a natural outgrowth of competition, one should focus carefully on audits, rate reviews, and the ILECs' rates of return," he stated.

Frisby concluded by stating that CompTel/ACTA's third White Paper is being distributed at the NARUC meeting. The paper, Evaluating OSS Availability: A Blueprint for Third Party Testing (PDF file), outlines the basic roadmap that state regulators can use to evaluate whether an ILEC has implemented non-discriminatory access to its operations support systems (OSS). "The goal is to ensure that an ILEC's OSS is working properly before it is applied in market conditions where failures may permanently affect customer perceptions of competitive services and their providers," he said.

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