Access Charge Reform; Price Cap Performance Review for Local Exchange Carriers; Transport Rate Structure and Pricing; Usage of the Public Switched Network by Information Service and Internet Access Providers

The Federal Communications Commission here reconsiders on its own motion five specific issues addressed in its First Report and Order in this proceeding. First, the Commission corrects errors in the rules adopted in the First Report and Order in this proceeding that could permit rural incumbent local exchange carriers (rural incumbent LECs) to recover twice a portion of their local switching costs, that could be interpreted to require carriers to deduct a potentially improper long term support amount from the base factor portion of their common- line revenue requirement, and that could result in improper calculation of annual access minutes-of-use calculated by LECs for use in setting per-minute charges for shared multiplexers on the end office side of the tandem switch. Second, the Commission clarified the steps non-price cap LECs should take to reassign the costs of trunk ports and multiplexers used at the tandem switch, and the costs of DS1/voice grade multiplexers used at the local switch, from the transport interconnection charge (TIC) rate element to the tandem switching rate element and the local switching rate element, respectively. Third, the Commission clarified that price cap carriers may vary their tandem-switching charge in accordance with the part 61 price cap rules, even after reassigning to the tandem-switching rate element the portion of tandem switching costs now recovered through the TIC. Fourth, the Commission revised its rules to revise the triggering point at which a price cap carrier should begin calculating its SLC based on average per-line common line revenues permitted under the price cap rules. Fifth, the Commission reinstated a portion of its rules relating to general support facilities that we erroneously deleted in the First Report and Order.