The FCC has received another blow against its attempts to open up the local US telecoms market. And once again it is from the 8th Circuit Court. Late Friday a US appeals court threw out FCC rules that sought to force RBOCs to halt the current practice that has consumers the opt not to use the incumbent RBOC having to dial extra access code digits. The St Louis-based court overturned the FCC’s dialing parity rules for intra local access and transport area (LATA) services. IntraLATA calls are those made within the RBOC region but are not local calls. Dialing parity enables a phone customer to place a call over a network using the carrier of their choice without having to dial an access code if the carrier is not the local phone monopoly. The court did not rule on the justification behind the FCC’s ruling but said its rules exceeded the scope of its jurisdiction.” It said such rules for IntraLATA calls overwhelmingly pertain to intrastate communications services and are thus beyond the scope of the FCC’s authority.” Last month, the same court ruled that the FCC did not have the authority to issue rules stipulating the pricing of local phone services. Instead the court ruled that only State regulators, not the FCC, had that power.The ruling adds further complexity to the FCC’s attempt to implement competition across the US telecoms market as demanded in last year’s Telecommunications Act. The incumbent RBOC’s, however, welcomed the decision, which is essentially a blow to long distance carriers such as AT&T Corp and MCI Communications Corp as they try to enter the RBOCs home territories.
