Incompas Wants More Time for BDS Replies

Incompas wants the FCC to extend from Thursday to May 28 the reply deadline on an April 15 public notice (see 1905140005) with supplemental business data services statistics. ILEC comments "raised issues and arguments well beyond the scope requested" by the PN, "which was expressly limited to transport services," the group said in a docket 18-141 posting Tuesday. ILECs "focused extensively on forbearance from the loop unbundling requirements asked for in USTelecom’s petition," the competitive LEC group said. "AT&T and Verizon also expressly rely on 'newly available data' wholly unrelated to the April Data Tables and the record in the BDS proceeding generally to support their argument for eliminating loop unbundling." USTelecom seeks to remove a mandate that ILECs provide transport network services to CLECs as an unbundled network element, which the competitive providers oppose (see 1905130050). USTelecom declined to comment now.