By European standards, the U.S. is now lagging in promoting competition and consumer choice in the telecom industry, according to a report released yesterday by Comptel, the trade/lobbying organization that represents competitive carriers.

The organization issued a scorecard, based on the annual scorecard done by the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA), to compare how the U.S. regulatory framework is set up to promote competition to how European governments are doing the same thing, in an objective way. According to Comptel, the U.S. ranked eighth among the 18 companies surveyed and trailed the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Italy and Spain.

The U.S. overall score of 60% was also the median score for all the participating countries.

“The predominant model in Europe is the incumbent’s network being open and available to competitors,” said Mary Albert, Comptel's assistant general counsel. “The FCC in the last few years – and they have been supported by the courts, so it’s not unilateral – has taken away a lot of the cost-based access that competitors initially had to the incumbents’ network, which made it much more expensive for competitive service providers. They did eliminate UNE-P access, and with all these forbearance petitions that have been filed or granted, they are eliminating a lot more than just UNE-P.”

UNE-P refers to capabilities, under the Telecom Act of 1996, for competitive service providers to buy all the necessary facilities and switching to provide competitive service. Requirements to provide UNE-P access ended in 2005.

The scorecard is based on a answers to a series of questions that look at the regulatory framework and such issues as the regulators’ ability to enforce rules and the incumbents’ ability to appeal rulings and how long those appeals can last and delay implementation of pro-competitive rulings.

The U.S. performed well on the issues of regulatory framework that dealt with the general powers of the Federal Communications Commission but poorly on other issues, notably the ability to resolve disputes quickly, the lack of effective accounting separation by incumbents, and the lack of effective measures against anti-competitive behavior, according to Comptel.

While the FCC’s general attitude toward competition isn’t likely to change dramatically until the commission itself changes, there is room for improvements such as a move to resolve disputes more quickly, Albert said.

“If the will was there, it would be possible to make a change in how disputes are resolved,” she said. “You can always blame it on the crush of work and how many other matters they have to address. So often times, it seems as much a factor of, this isn’t something we want to decide anytime soon. That is something that has been brought to the attention of Congress as well. Often times matters are filed at the FCC and they just sit there.”

For example, the FCC has been asked to decide if state regulators have the authority to set prices on certain unbundled network elements as far back as 2004, when BellSouth sought FCC intervention with state regulators in Tennessee, and the issue came up again a year ago, in a filing by Georgia regulators, Albert said.

“It doesn’t seem like such a big deal,” she said. “The problem now is that, because they won’t issue a ruling, now there is litigation pending in the courts and before various commissions on this issue. The FCC could just interpret the statute as it sees fit, and be it pro or con, at least there would be a decision.”

At that point, if competitive service providers disagreed, they could take the issue to the courts and get it resolved, she said.