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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.
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:
Task Group 2 Implementation. Task group 2 addresses implementation issues by:
Task Group 3 Operations. Task group 3 addresses issues of operations by:
Task Group 4 User Interoperability. Task group 4 monitors interoperability by ensuring that:
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 NTTs 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.
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:
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 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:
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 Communitys Open Network Provision Directives, and Japans 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:
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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