II. Background
In orders issued in 2003 and 2005, known, respectively as the Triennial Review Order1 (TRO) and the Triennial Review Remand Order2 (TRRO), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) eliminated or restricted the unbundling obligations for numerous unbundled network elements (UNEs). Verizon filed this petition for arbitration in March 2004 in an effort to implement change-of-law provisions emanating from the FCC's TRO order. The parties attempted to negotiate amendments to their interconnection agreements (ICAs) in order to implement the changes in unbundling rules, and eventually brought 24 disputed issues to the Commission to resolve.
Parties filed Opening Briefs on the disputed issues on December 23, 2005, and Reply Briefs, on January 13, 2006. In D.06-02-035, we resolved the disputed issues and, in Ordering Paragraph 2, we ordered the parties to file the final version of the Amendment as an Advice Letter with the Commission's Telecommunications Division within 30 days of the effective date of our order.
Following issuance of D.06-02-035, the parties worked to prepare a conformed version of the amendment. However, in a number of instances, the parties believed that it was necessary to add or delete language that the Commission did not specifically order added or stricken. Verizon filed its brief on the conforming language disputes on March 22, 2006, as did AT&T (operating as a CLEC in Verizon's territory). The Joint CLECs filed their comments on the disputed contract language on March 30, 2006.
1 In the Matter of Review of the Section 251 Unbundling Obligations of Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, Report and Order and Order on Remand and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 18 FCC Rcd. 16,978, FCC 03-36 (2003).
2 In the Matter of Unbundled Access to Network Elements; Review of the Section 251 Unbundling Obligations of Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, Order on Remand, 20 FCC Rcd 2533, FCC 04-290 (rel. Feb. 4, 2005) (TRRO).
