The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released a Further Notice of Proposed Rule Making (FNPRM) in its Updating the Intercarrier Compensation Regime to Eliminate Access Arbitrage docket seeking to prevent “new business strategies to engage in access stimulation by evading our existing Access Stimulation Rules.” Specifically, the FCC seeks to extend those rules to traffic that terminates through providers of IP-enabled services (IPES Providers). The Further Notice proposes, therefore, that when the terminating-to-originating traffic ratios of an IPES Provider exceed the ratios in the existing Access Stimulation Rules, the IPES Provider will be deemed to be engaged in access stimulation and interexchange carriers cannot be billed access charges for calls bound to that IPES provider. Comments and Reply Comments will be due 30 and 60 days, respectively, after publication of the FNPRM in the Federal Register.
