Sprint, T-Mobile Caution FCC on AT&T All-IP Trials

Sprint and T-Mobile are calling into question AT&T's recently announced IP-network trials in Florida and Alabama, saying the initiative is holding back the rest of the industry's move to develop cross-carrier IP interconnections.

"AT&T’s proposed experiment is putting the cart before the horse," Sprint wrote in a filing at the Federal Communications Commission, arguing that many of the benefits of AT&T's transition to an all-IP infrastructure will be lost if carriers do not first migrate their wholesale and inter-carrier interconnections to IP. Calling AT&T's experiment "isolated" and "complicated", Sprint argued that "carriers should not have to wait for this experiment to finish before migrating their networks from Time Division Multiplex (TDM) to IP or to interconnect in IP format with other carriers.

T-Mobile expressed similar reservations in a separate filing, urging the commission not to let trials such as AT&T’s distract it from ensuring interconnection amongst all carriers. T-Mobile suggested that the commission ensure AT&T’s trials do not involve "unnecessary, inefficient, and consumer-impacting TDM-IP conversions or needlessly inefficient" Points of Interconnection (POI).