Yacknin Draft Arbit. Rpt. on Level 3 Communications' application for arbitration of interconnection agreement with Pacific Bell Telephone Company

V. Network Interconnection Method

H. Responsibility for Trunk Groups

This dispute concerns whether the parties' agreement to provide sufficient facilities required for the exchange of traffic should refer to "local interconnection trunk groups" as SBC proposes or simply "trunk groups" as Level 3 proposes.

SBC opposes the broad term "trunk groups" as potentially requiring SBC to be financially responsible for facilities that carry trunk groups for which Level 3 is responsible. Level 3 contends that this issue relates to, and should be disposed of consistent with, Disputed Issue ITR-2 regarding whether Level 3 may commingle all traffic types over local interconnection trunks or, conversely, if it must route interexchange traffic over Feature Group D trunks.

Consistent with the earlier determination that interexchange traffic (which does not include IP-enabled services traffic) shall be routed on Feature Group D trunks, I dispose of NIM-5 by adopting SBC's proposed language for NIM § 2.7, and rejecting Level 3's.

I. "Applicable Law" as Physical Collocation Option

This dispute in NIM-7 is whether Level 3 may reserve the option of interconnecting "according to Applicable Law," in addition to the agreed-upon options of interconnecting either under the provisions of this agreement or under applicable state tariff. Level 3 states that it requires this third option to reserve its rights pursuant to legal proceedings that may impact the agreement and to changes in SBC's tariffs.

I reject Level 3's proposed insert to NIM §§ 3.1.1 and 3.2.1. The intervening law provision in the General Terms and Conditions (GT&C) Appendix adequately reserves the parties' rights pursuant to legislative, administrative or court proceedings that affect the collocation methods identified in the agreement. The proposed language of GT&C § 21 does not, however, adequately reserve the parties' rights with respect to modifications or invalidations of applicable state tariffs. Accordingly, as directed at Sections VI.A and XII.C, the phrase "applicable state tariffs" shall be inserted into GT&C § 21.1 to indicate that modifications to state tariffs are a form of intervening law.