FCC Ends CMRS Integration Proceeding Pending Since 2000
The FCC Fri. terminated another extended proceeding, dismissing as moot 1999 petitions for consideration by Nextel and Rand McNally questioning whether Telecom Act rate integration provisions apply to CMRS. In acting, the FCC ended what could have been a pesky proceeding for carriers, though the questions raised now have little relevance.
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Wireless carriers today generally charge nationwide rates, rendering rate integration issues largely meaningless. But the proceeding had been pending nearly 7 years. “This closes one of those things that’s been hanging on forever,” an industry source said: “It’s the clearest statement we've gotten that the FCC accepts the ruling from the court of appeals that rate integration doesn’t apply to CMRS. We were always wondering, ‘Is the FCC going to make us do this again?’ Today they said ‘No.'”
The case has a long history. When the Act was passed in 1996, Sens. Stevens (R-Alaska) and Inouye (D-Hawaii) ensured it required that subscribers in all states got the same long distance rates. The FCC decided that this provision applied to CMRS as well as long distance, a finding carriers fought.
Carriers took the Commission to the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., which in July 2000 decided that the Commission had erred in deciding that section 254(g) of the Act was unambiguous and plainly applied to CMRS providers. The court remanded the issue to the Commission, where it languished until the FCC killed it.
“We conclude that the pending petitions for reconsideration should be dismissed as moot because the court’s vacatur of the rate integration further reconsideration and forbearance order means that there is no rate integration rule currently applicable to CMRS carriers,” the FCC said: “As such, we can neither reconsider that rule, as requested by Nextel, nor reconsider the manner in which we have defined how that rule is applicable, as requested by Rand McNally.”