Jim Falvey is a partner with over 25 years’ experience handling telecommunications regulatory matters at the state, federal, and local levels, primarily for competitive local exchange carriers. For 15 years, he served as a senior executive and in-house counsel for several competitive telecom carriers, providing a thorough understanding of telecom networks, numbering issues, and other internal operational functions.
Before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Jim represents competitive providers on many fronts, including intercarrier compensation, unbundling, numbering, VoIP, robocalling, and Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) issues. At the state level, Jim helps telecom providers meet state regulatory requirements and offers counsel in matters ranging from certification, financing and merger approvals to carrier disputes and the negotiation and approval of interconnection agreements.
Jim also represents fiber network companies, negotiating IRU, long-term fiber lease, conduit, private easement, small cell attachment, and municipal franchise agreements. He offers experienced advocacy in matters such as obtaining easements from resistant landowners, expediting municipal franchise agreements, collecting past due payments, and challenging burdensome rights-of-way agreements.
Jim brings a focused and thorough legal analysis to every problem his clients present. He draws on his own experience as an in-house attorney to deliver efficient, cost-conscious legal advice based on his broad knowledge of the challenges faced by new entrant telecom companies. Jim looks for efficient legal solutions that will ultimately save clients money and avoid future legal entanglements. He understands that legal services must help accomplish a company’s long-term business interests in order to be an asset.
Jim has experience working with federal and state regulators at many levels. He has testified before 15 state public service commissions on interconnection, resale, collocation, and unbundling. As an in-house SVP, he conducted multiple rounds of multi-state interconnection arbitrations against every major incumbent carrier. He also engineered the collection of over $80M in reciprocal compensation and access charge awards. Jim has been a regular advocate at the FCC for the past 20 years on many of the key issues affecting competitive carriers. He has also worked on both the House and Senate side of Capitol Hill as a legislative aide for U.S. Representative and then U.S. Senator Harry Reid. Jim is a frequent speaker on telecom regulatory issues at trade shows and conferences.
Learn more about Jim's representative work, speaking engagements and publications.