II. The September 15, 2004 Ruling

The Assigned Commissioner and ALJ issued the September 15, 2004 Ruling Maintaining the Status Quo after all affected parties fully briefed the motion, including offering supporting declarations.

Because the ruling is attached to this decision, we do not repeat its contents. Briefly, the ruling restrains Verizon California Inc. (Verizon) from eliminating the ability of AT&T¹ to purchase unbundled Local Switching and/or Common Transport network elements, alone and in combination with other network elements, until AT&T's complaint is resolved, or until further order of the Commission or the Assigned Commissioner and ALJ. The ruling is predicated on contractual interpretation of two interconnection agreements between the parties to this action.

Several other California competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) filed motions to intervene, or other complaints at the Commission with similar requests to maintain the status quo as to their interconnection agreements. To maintain a level playing field and treat Verizon's interconnection agreements with all similarly situated California CLECs in the same way, the ruling maintains the status quo by extending the restraint to Verizon's performance under its California interconnection agreements with substantially similar provisions concerning Verizon's obligation of providing the functionality of access to the Local Switching and Common Transport network elements.

The ruling also permits Verizon to record and accrue the difference between the status quo (unbundled network elements platform) prices and the proposed (resale platform) process for each CLEC affected by the ruling commencing on the date Verizon's letter to the CLEC stated it was upgrading to packet switches. The ruling states that any decision resolving the complaint in Verizon's favor may include a plan for recovery of the total differential from each affected CLEC.

The September 15, 2004 Ruling Maintaining the Status Quo made clear that it does not prohibit Verizon from deploying its new packet switches. Nor does the ruling require Verizon to unbundle and provide the advance services capabilities of its packet switches to AT&T. The ruling requires Verizon to continue to provide AT&T access to unbundled Local Switching and Common Transport elements under the terms of the interconnection agreements, regardless of what type of hardware Verizon uses to do so. The ruling does so because the agreements address the functionality, and not the specific hardware of the switch providing the Local Switch and Common Transport elements.

The ruling finds that AT&T has met the burden for obtaining injunctive relief by showing (1) a likelihood of prevailing on the merits; (2) irreparable injury to the moving party without the order; (3) no substantial harm to other interested parties; and (4) no harm to the public interest.

¹ Complainants are AT&T Communications of California, Inc., TCG Los Angeles, Inc., TCG San Diego, and TCG San Francisco, collectively referred to here as "AT&T".