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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 142 / Wednesday, July 28, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
emphasizes the 2003 Starpower Damages Order. For its part, NCIC
argues that the Commissions precedent has been correctly cited by GTL, and that the Commission should continue to follow that precedent in the context of calling services for incarcerated people.
33. The Commission disagrees. The Commission reaffirms the Commissions prior conclusion that not one of the decisions cited in GTLs Petition adopted a general policy allowing broad use of jurisdictional proxies, such as NPANXX codes. Those decisions primarily concern the use of jurisdictional proxies to determine the appropriate rating between and among various types of service providers routing calls originating from one NPA
NXX code to a terminating NPANXX
code and vice versa. None of them allow for the use of jurisdictional proxies in the context of inmate calling services for which consumers may be charged different rates based on whether a call is classified as interstate or intrastate.
Instead, the decisions GTL cites merely reflect that the Commission has allowed carriers to use proxies for determining the jurisdictional nature of calls in specific contexts, typically related to carrier-to-carrier matters or payment of fees owed.
34. At bottom, GTL requests that the Commission engraft into its inmate calling services rules a jurisdictional proxyrelying on NPANXX codes for all telephone calls from incarcerated people to a called party regardless of the called parties service provider of choicethat the Commission has never suggested might be used in determining the jurisdictional classification of an inmate calling services call. The Commission thus is not persuaded that GTLs approach reflects a reasonable interpretation of the Commissions existing rules.
35. GTL seizes on certain language in the Starpower Damages Order that, GTL
claims, establishes a historical or consistent use of NPANXX codes.
Contrary to GTLs assertions, however, the Starpower decision did not announce a general policy permitting the use of jurisdictional proxies. Rather, Starpower was narrowly concerned with an intercarrier compensation dispute, the resolution of which hinged on the treatment of traffic under a Verizon tariff. In the liability phase of the proceeding, Starpower obtained an order from the Commission obligating Verizon to pay reciprocal compensation under an interconnection agreement for whatever calls Verizon South bills to its own customers as local calls under the Tariff, regardless of whether a call
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is jurisdictionally interstate. In the damages phase, Verizon argued that, under its tariff definition, the physical location of the called parties, and not the telephone numbers, determined whether service was local. But the Commission concluded that Verizon rated and billed ISP-bound traffic under its tariff by looking to the telephone numbers of the parties to a call and not the parties physical locations. The Commission held that since Verizon treated ISP-bound calls as local under the Tariff, Verizon was obligated to pay reciprocal compensation under the interconnection agreement. Thus, although Starpower contains passing references to the use of NPANXX to determine the jurisdictional nature of certain traffic, the decision ultimately turned on the Commissions interpretation of Verizons tariff and Verizons own practices in applying that tariff. Accordingly, Starpower does not establish any Commission or industrywide policy on the use of jurisdictional proxies. The fact that Starpower involved internet service providerbound traffici.e., traffic to another type of service provider, which at the time was a separate unsettled jurisdictional issue, rather than an end user telephone subscriberalone, makes this case entirely inapposite.
36. In any event, it is simply not reasonable or reliable now, nor has it been for many years, to assume that a called party is physically located in the geographic area rate center of the switch to which the partys NPANXX
code is native. Before Congress adopted the 1996 Act, when incumbent LECs controlled 99% of the local voice marketplace, one could reasonably assume that a called party was physically located in the geographic area associated with a particular NPA
NXX, as NPANXX codes were associated only with a particular incumbents rate center. Since that time, however, number porting between and among competing wireline LECs, wireless carriers, and fixed and nomadic VoIP providers has rendered NPANXX
codes an all-too-frequently unreliable means to determine whether a called party is physically located within a particular state when it receives and answers a given call.
37. In the 1996 Act, Congress included the requirement that each LEC
provide, to the extent technically feasible, number portability in accordance with requirements prescribed by the Commission. This definition now appears in section 337
of the Act. The number portability rules subsequently adopted by the Commission, as modified over time,
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limit number porting between wireline incumbents and wireline competitors to ports within the same rate center. With respect to wireline-to-wireless porting, the Commission requires wireline carriers to port to requesting wireless carriers where the requesting wireless carriers coverage area overlaps the geographic location in which the customers wireline number is provisioned, provided that the portingin carrier maintains the numbers NPA
NXX original rate center designation following the port. In other words, when the wireline number is ported to the wireless carriers customer, the original rate center designation is maintained for routing and rating purposes by other service providers. A
wireless carrier may only port a number to a wireline carrier if the number is associated with the rate center of the wireline carrier where the customer is located. Nomadic VoIP is usually a VoIP phone installed in a portable computer which can be taken with the subscriber so that calls can be made from anywhere in the world. By comparison, fixed VoIP is not movable.
The fixed service is provided by a cable company, for example, where the telephone does not leave the residence.
The Commission began its work implementing the 1996 Acts number portability requirement with its 1996
First Number Portability Order, in which it adopted an initial set of rules governing wireline-to-wireline, wireless-to-wireless, and wireline-towireless number portability obligations.
It required that LECs in the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas MSAs begin implementing a long-term number portability methodology on a phased deployment schedule, and that CMRS
providers be able to port numbers by the wireline carriers deadline to complete number portability implementation and to support network-wide roaming thereafter. The Commission also established LEC number portability implementation obligations outside of the 100 largest MSAs. Subsequently, in 2007, the Commission extended local number portability obligations to interconnected VoIP providers, both fixed and nomadic. In 2015, the Commission opened direct access to numbering resources to interconnected VoIP providers.
38. Today, consumers increasingly rely on nomadic VoIP and mobile voice services for telephone service. Nomadic interconnected VoIP services are provided as over-the-top applications and are not associated with any specific geographic location. In this way, nomadic interconnected VoIP service is
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