FCC Endorses Number ‘Pooling’ But Lets States Continue Initiatives

The FCC has endorsed a national policy of number “pooling,” but it said it would allow state regulators to move forward with their own number-pooling initiatives as well. In an order adopted at its March 17 meeting, the FCC took other steps as well to ensure that phone numbers and blocks of numbers will be used more efficiently.

Under the new rules, it should be easier for the FCC to monitor the distribution of numbers and ensure that carriers don’t “warehouse” numbers. And in a further notice of proposed rulemaking, the agency is seeking additional comment on several issues, including whether it should charge carriers for numbering resources—an idea that has drawn the interest of at least two Commissioners. The text of the order and further rulemaking notice weren’t available at SLCR’s March 21 news deadline.

As expected, the order provides for numbers to be distributed to carriers in blocks of 1,000, rather than the traditional blocks of 10,000. Number pooling, however, won’t begin until a pooling administrator is selected.

After the administrator is selected, Common Carrier Bureau officials said, the implementation of 1,000-number-block pooling will be phased in: Every three months, number pooling will be implemented for three area codes in each of seven regions. Those regions correspond to the seven existing regional local number portability (LNP) databases in the U.S.

The number-pooling requirements apply to all carriers now required to offer local number portability. Wireless service providers, which have to be LNP-capable by November 2002, will have to participate in number pooling at that time or “soon thereafter,” the FCC said in a public notice. The exact date of their participation is a topic raised in the further rulemaking notice.

State Efforts To Continue

Areas that aren’t slated for early number pooling under the national phase-in policy won’t necessarily have to wait. The FCC already has delegated authority to 10 state regulatory commissions to implement number-conservation efforts, including number-pooling trials. The agency has petitions still pending from more than a dozen other states, said Yog Varma, deputy chief of the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau. “We will. . .make a judgment if any further delegation is called for,” he said.

The bureau expects more state regulators to come forward with requests to implement number pooling. “We want the states to move forward,” a Common Carrier Bureau attorney told SLCR. “We definitely see the benefits to thousands-block pooling, and if it means the states move first, we’re actually [in favor of] that.”

Number pooling “takes a while to get up and running,” the attorney said. He noted that the bureau granted authority to California in September 1999, and that trial was slated to start early this week.

The order includes “administrative” methods for ensuring that carriers don’t get more numbers than they need. The agency adopted a uniform set of definitions for numbering statuses (such as “used” or “reserved”), objective criteria, and enhanced data reporting to “increase carrier accountability and incentives to use numbers efficiently.”

The order also requires carriers to return unused numbers so they can be assigned to other carriers, and it requires carriers—“to the extent possible”—to assign numbers sequentially to facilitate reclamation and pooling.

The further rulemaking notice seeks comment on the recovery of costs for implementing number pooling. Mr. Varma said he didn’t think carriers would need to place line items on bills to recover those costs, which should be a “fraction” of the costs of deploying LNP, he added.

The notice also asks whether charging carriers for numbers would be a viable way to ease the rapid “exhaustion” of area codes. Commissioner Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth indicated his support for that approach, suggesting that the revenues be used to fund universal service programs.

The “culprit” behind number exhaustion is that the “pricing mechanism is wrong,” he said, because carriers don’t have to pay for the numbers. “This is a good item going in the right direction,” he added. “But it needs to go further. . .We’re dealing with an extremely valuable resource that’s clearly under federal jurisdiction.” Commissioner Michael K. Powell agreed that the FCC should explore charging carriers for numbers.

Commissioner Susan Ness said she would have “preferred” that the order exempt “to a greater extent” carriers in rural areas, “where the demand for numbers is very low.”

After reading the FCC’s announcement of its action, Bob Rowe, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said, “It appears that the FCC’s order is largely responsive to our requests. Area code conservation is a priority for NARUC’s member state commissions, and we appreciate the FCC’s efforts to give us the authority needed to address this growing problem.”

State & Local Communications Report, March 24, 2000