§  69.306   Central office equipment (COE).

   (a) The Separations Manual categories shall be used for purposes of
   apportioning investment in such equipment except that any Central
   office equipment attributable to local transport shall be assigned to
   the Transport elements.

   (b) COE Category 1 (Operator Systems Equipment) shall be apportioned
   among the interexchange category and the access elements as follows:
   Category 1 that is used for intercept services shall be assigned to the
   Local Switching element. Category 1 that is used for directory
   assistance shall be assigned to the Information element. Category 1
   other than service observation boards that is not assigned to the
   Information element and is not used for intercept services shall be
   assigned to the interexchange category. Service observation boards
   shall be apportioned among the interexchange category, and the
   Information and Transport access elements based on the remaining
   combined investment in COE Category 1, Category 2 and Category 3.

   (c) COE Category 2 (Tandem Switching Equipment) that is deemed to be
   exchange equipment for purposes of the Modification of Final Judgment
   in United States v. Western Electric Co. shall be assigned to the
   tandem switching charge subelement and the interconnection charge
   element. COE Category 2 which is associated with the signal transfer
   point function shall be assigned to the local switching category. COE
   Category 2 which is used to provide transmission facilities between the
   local exchange carrier's signalling transfer point and the database
   shall be assigned to the Line Information Database subelement at
   § 69.120(a). All other COE Category 2 shall be assigned to the
   interexchange category.

   (d) COE Category 3 (Local Switching Equipment) shall be assigned to the
   Local Switching element except as provided in paragraph (a) of this
   section; and that,

   (1) For telephone companies subject to price cap regulation set forth
   in part 61 of this chapter, line-side port costs shall be assigned to
   the Common Line rate element; and

   (2) Beginning January 1, 2002, for non-price cap local exchange
   carriers, line-side port costs shall be assigned to the Common Line
   rate element. Such amount shall be determined after any local switching
   support has been removed from the interstate Local Switching revenue
   requirement. Non-price cap local exchange carriers may use thirty
   percent of the interstate Local Switching revenue requirement, minus
   any local switching support, as a proxy for allocating line port costs
   to the Common Line category.

   (e) COE Category 4 (Circuit Equipment) shall be apportioned among the
   interexchange category and the Common Line, Transport, and Special
   Access elements. COE Category 4 shall be apportioned in the same
   proportions as the associated Cable and Wireless Facilities; except
   that any DS1/voice-grade multiplexer investment associated with analog
   local switches and assigned to the local transport category by this
   section shall be reallocated to the local switching category.

   [ 52 FR 37312 , Oct. 6, 1987, as amended at  57 FR 54722 , Nov. 20, 1992;
    58 FR 30995 , May 28, 1993;  62 FR 31938 , June 11, 1997;  66 FR 59732 ,
   Nov. 30, 2001]