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Network Reliability and Interoperability Committee (NRIC)

The charter of NRIC, set by the FCC, is to ask the council to provide recommendations for the FCC and for the telecommunications industry that will ensure optimal reliability, interoperability, and accessibility to public telecommunications networks. The objective of the recommendations is to ensure that users and information providers can seamlessly transmit and receive information between and across telecommunications networks. The charter asks the council to continue to report on the reliability of public telecommunications networks. The NRIC has organized two working groups to gather and analyze information.

Focus Group 1. The council has organized focus group 1 to identify technical and engineering barriers to network accessibility and interconnectivity and to identify ways to eliminate them. Focus group 1 documents and evaluates the processes by which coordinated network planning and design occur, and will evaluate options for optimizing these processes. The group considers security issues and methods by which the FCC could oversee coordinated network planning. The FCC will provide focus group 1 with conferencing resources, including a Web site, so that it can make work files available electronically.

Focus Group 2. Focus group 2 assesses the effectiveness of the standards-setting process and determines what role is most appropriate for the FCC. Focus group 2 uses conference resources provided by Committee T- 1, an ANSI-accredited standards development organization sponsored by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, to make work files available.

Task Groups

Four task groups have been established within focus group 1 to address planning, implementation, operations, and user interoperability.

Task Group 1 — Planning. Task group 1 addresses the issue of planning by:

  Identifying the differences between planning for network architectures and network implementations.
  Identifying the differences between the planning of national and regional services.
  Examining the transition of architectures, products, and services from a proprietary to a public status.
  Evaluating the impacts that protecting competitive information has on the planning and design of products and services.
  Examining timing issues relative to matching the availability of network products and services.
  Developing a recommendation on the FCC’s role for coordinated network planning.

Task Group 2 — Implementation. Task group 2 addresses implementation issues by:

  Monitoring information sharing.
  Monitoring the interconnection environment.
  Acting as an industry liaison to improve implementation processes.

Task Group 3 — Operations. Task group 3 addresses issues of operations by:

  Investigating operations systems access (i.e., functionality, interfaces, security, reliability, and measurements).
  Overseeing performance monitoring.
  Determining security requirements (i.e., ID authorization, auditing, access control, partitioning, and measurements).
  Investigating signaling (i.e., congestion control, interoperability, reliability, synchronization, and security).
  Confirmation of interoperability by testing and certification.

Task Group 4 — User Interoperability. Task group 4 monitors interoperability by ensuring that:

  There are increased interconnections.
  There are Internet interconnections.
  Asynchronous transfer mode service is available to users.
  There are service interconnection definitions.
  There are adequate standards for vendor compatibility.

WORLDWIDE DEREGULATION ACTIVITIES

Japan’s Interconnection Rules

The Telecommunications Council Report indicates that the bilateral negotiation process in Japan has been plagued by problems. Negotiations for frame relay service and virtual private networks service between long-distance new common carriers and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) have taken an unduly long period of time. Thus, interconnection between suppliers with essential facilities, such as NTT’s local communications network and other suppliers, has become a very important issue to a telecommunications policy dedicated to fair and effective competition.

As a consequence, the Japanese government created the “Deregulation Action Program” to clarify the basic rules for interconnection to the NTT local communications network. Japan recently established a “set points of interconnection” very similar to those enumerated in the 1996 U.S. Telecommunications Act.

Europe’s Open Network Provision

The European community created a directive to establish the internal market for telecommunications services through an open network provision (ONP). The directive states that ONP should include harmonized conditions with regard to:

  Technical interfaces, including the definition and implementation of network termination points.
  Usage conditions, including access to frequencies.
  Tariff principles.

The requirements are published in the ONP standards list. This list is divided into those elements that are formally referenced (i.e., mandatory in the context of ON) and those still considered voluntary. These are known as the reference list and the indicative list, respectively.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is the driving force in the development of telecommunications standards for Europe. The ONP mandates ETSI to produce standards to meet its evolving requirements. Most ETSI standards are equivalent to or extensions of international standards.

The U.K. — A Framework for Action

The UK established two methods of addressing anticompetitive behavior.

First, generic interconnection regimes will be set up, as opposed to case-by-case interconnection conditions. Second, all deliberations will take place in the public domain because:

  Publication of cases will promote better understanding of policies and the interpretation of license conditions and legislative provisions, and of what is considered to be conduct or circumstances requiring enforcement or remedial action.
  Publicity of cases in which companies were uncooperative and acted unfairly may discourage others from following suit.

SUMMARY

Countries experiencing deregulation concur that a framework based solely on bilateral negotiations between carriers does not function effectively and that something more needs to be done to level the playing field.

New initiatives are being taken in many regions around the world to address network interconnection in a more generic, consistent, and controlled way. The new provisions for interconnection within the recent 1996 US Telecommunications Act, the European Community’s Open Network Provision Directives, and Japan’s Basic Rules for Interconnection are ample evidence of worldwide efforts to reintroduce regulation based on collaboration and consensus.

Typically, these initiatives have two major components:

  The establishment of formal points of interconnection.
  The identification of standards to be used at the points of interconnection.

To offset discriminatory practices, the U.S. and Japan enumerated a preliminary minimum set of obligatory interconnection points and accessible network elements selected from an unbundled architecture. Europe appears to be heading in the same direction.

The 1996 US Telecommunications Act and the new activities initiated by the FCC will be of great benefit to the consumer in offering a wider choice of services and suppliers at a lower cost. However, there is still a considerable way to go before a truly open and fully competitive environment will be realized.


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