2. Background

On November 8, 2004, Pac-West filed a petition for arbitration of an ICA with SureWest pursuant to § 252(b) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Act or TA96).

Pac-West is a California-based competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) that was authorized to provide facilities-based and resold competitive local exchange service by Decision (D.) 95-12-057 and D.96-02-072, respectively, in the service territories of Pacific Bell Telephone Company and Verizon California Inc. Then, by D.97-09-115, the scope of Pac-West's facilities-based and resale local exchange authority was expanded to include the service territories of SureWest (formerly Roseville Telephone Company) and Citizens Telecommunications of California, Inc.

Pac-West and SureWest established interconnection arrangements a number of years ago and have discussed interconnection agreement provisions at various times since then. The agreement that is the subject of this petition is a new agreement that will supersede all prior arrangements and understandings on a going-forward basis. For purposes of this petition, the parties have agreed that the arbitration filing window opened on October 15, 2004 and closed on November 8, 2004, inclusive. Therefore, this petition was timely filed.

On December 3, 2004, SureWest filed its Response to Pac-West's petition. In its response, SureWest summarized its position on the issues previously raised by Pac-West. On January 10, 2005, the parties filed a "Revised Statement of Unresolved Issues," which showed there to be two unresolved issues. One of those issues was subsequently resolved by the parties.

The one unresolved issue is as follows:

Should SureWest be responsible for bearing 100% of the costs of interconnection facilities located on its side of the Point of Interconnection (POI), or should those costs be borne equally by Pac-West and SureWest?

Opening briefs were filed and served on February 4, 2005, with reply briefs, on March 14, 2005. The Draft Arbitrator's Report (DAR) was issued on April 4, 2005, and comments on the DAR were filed on April 14, 2005 by Pac-West and on April 18, 2005, by SureWest. The Final Arbitrator's Report (FAR) was filed and served on May 26, 2005.

The fully executed conformed agreement was filed with the Commission on June 2, 2005, and on the same date both parties filed statements concerning the outcome in the FAR.