FCC and Special Access: A CenturyLink Win

Is the Federal Communications Commission re-thinking the hard line it has taken on special access pricing in the last couple of years? The FCC moved CenturyLink a step closer to pricing flexibility on the special access circuits it sells to enterprise customers and to other carriers -- a departure from other recent actions the commission has taken that have restricted incumbent carriers’ special access price flexibility.

The FCC’s latest move concerns a petition that CenturyLink filed with the commission in December 2013 asking the FCC to forbear from dominant carrier regulation and tariffing requirements for packet-switched and optical transmission services subject to that type of regulation. The FCC had a deadline of this past Friday March 13 to deny the petition, which it did not do. And on March 16, the FCC issued a press release to inform the public that CenturyLink’s petition was indeed “deemed granted.”