..Case Studies

Dispute Resolution

Commissions have been increasingly burdened with the need to resolve intercarrier disputes, which involve complex technical, operating, contractual, and policy issues not traditionally within their jurisdiction and expertise.  Many commissions have turned to Liberty as a source of mediation, facilitation, and adjudication of such disputes.  Liberty has provided senior, experienced experts to serve as arbitrators of interconnection agreement disputes between telecommunications carriers for the public service commissions of Idaho, Mississippi, Nebraska, and North Dakota. 

In addition, Liberty has provided a facilitator who acted in a capacity like that of an Administrative Law Judge for the states of Idaho, Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming in multi-state proceedings (involving more than 30 days of hearings).  The purpose of these proceedings was to resolve more than a hundred disputed issues involving RBOC compliance with the 1996 Telecommunications Act’s competitive checklist that specified the interconnection and network access duties owed to competitors.  For those same states and two others, Liberty also provided dispute resolution services that addressed deadlock among carriers over many important and complex issues related to the payments and penalties to which carriers and states would be entitled when the RBOC failed to meet specific performance requirements. 

Liberty has also served as an Administrative Law Judge in disputes involving paging companies and local exchange carriers with whom they interconnect and take service.  Liberty also routinely serves as the technical advisor to Administrative Law Judges for the Delaware Public Service Commission when they sit on intercarrier dispute proceedings. Liberty has served as technical advisor to a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and also to all the commissioners of the District of Columbia Public Service Commission in proceedings related to state reviews under Section 271 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.