Qwest, Other Bells Urge FCC to End ‘Outdated’ ARMIS Reports
Qwest got support from AT&T and Verizon as it campaigns to do away with ARMIS reporting requirements. But everyone else filing in the FCC proceeding opposed Qwest’s forbearance petition. Competitors and consumer groups told the FCC that the reports sometimes are the only data available for tracking a Bell’s dominance. The views came in reply comments filed Friday. “ARMIS” refers to Bells’ filing the reports through the Automated Reporting Management Information System. Qwest seeks elimination of many, though not all, of the reports, calling them time-consuming and unnecessary.
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A shift nearly 15 years ago to price cap regulations removed the need for ARMIS reports, and rising competition undercut the value of related reports on service quality and infrastructure, Verizon said. “The time to eliminate the ARMIS reports is now,” for all providers, the carrier said. The reports “primarily contain cost data that relates only to rate of return regulation,” Verizon said. After moving to price cap regulation, the FCC kept the reports to monitor the transition, which is long past, the company said. “Moreover, the vibrant competition of the last several years has washed away any remaining justification for even the ARMIS service quality and infrastructure reports,” Verizon said.
“Without question, the Commission has had ample time and experience with price caps to recognize that its predictive judgements in 1990 about price caps’ effectiveness have been validated,” AT&T said. “It is now time to retire the ARMIS ‘monitors’ which have long since outlived their intended purpose.”
Qwest disagreed with critics that have called ARMIS reports necessary to protect consumers or make sure that rates and practices are “just and reasonable.” Qwest said forbearance is in the public interest because it would eliminate “unnecessarily burdensome and asymmetric reporting requirements on Qwest.” ARMIS reports “provide little useful information on the state of competition in telecommunications markets that Qwest serves that cannot be obtained elsewhere,” it said.
Qwest disagreed with those that want ARMIS considered in a separate rulemaking proceeding and not through forbearance. Forbearance language in section 10 of the Communications Act doesn’t prevent carriers from seeking forbearance “on matters that may be more appropriately addressed in a rulemaking,” Qwest told the FCC. “Nor does Section 10 preclude the Commission from ruling on such requests.” Saying only that a rulemaking is appropriate is a “deeply flawed” position, said AT&T.
Everyone but the Bells opposes elimination of ARMIS reports, “for good reason,” CompTel said. Qwest’s main argument is that the rules burden it, but that doesn’t justify forbearance, CompTel said. “Qwest seems to have confused the ‘public interest’ with Qwest’s interest.” Initial comments showed that ARMIS data see use by the FCC, state commissioners and consumer groups “in evaluating the just and reasonableness of Qwest’s rates and the quality of the service provided,” CompTel said.
Those filing earlier comments gave “numerous concrete examples of the uses of ARMIS data,” said a filing by the New Jersey Rate Counsel, Washington State Attorney General’s Office and National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. “In some cases, ARMIS reporting is the primary, or only, source of comprehensive information for regulators and consumer advocates.” BT Americas noted that the Government Accountability Office calls ARMIS reports “the only ‘publicly available’ major source of data that FCC uses to gauge competition in the markets for dedicated access services.” Competitors and buyers of special access services “have relied heavily on ARMIS data to develop the record in the special access proceeding,” BT said.
The Colorado Consumer Counsel said information in Qwest’s reports “cannot be replicated or easily obtained” elsewhere. Colorado regulators use ARMIS data to set state universal service subsidies, evaluate competition and monitor state deregulation of some services, the consumer counsel said.
Qwest is barred from obtaining the ARMIS relief sought if it wants to remain “a non-dominant provider of long distance service,” said Time Warner Telecom, raising an objection offered by several opponents of the request. A recent FCC order allowing the Bells to integrate local and long distance services without “dominant carrier” regulations “made crystal clear… that Qwest could only reintegrate its in-region interexchange operations on a non-dominant basis if it complied with four conditions, one of which was the obligation to file modified ARMIS reports,” Time Warner Telecom said.
Not so, said Qwest. The “Section 272” order that Time Warner cited requires Qwest to meet accounting and cost allocation rules, a requirement not affected by eliminating ARMIS cost reporting, Qwest said. “The Commission’s accounting and cost allocation rules will remain in place with a grant of Qwest’s forbearance petition,” the company said. Qwest still will be required to file a “cost allocation manual (CAM) governing its affiliate transactions and cost assignments to nonregulated activities, including interstate interLATA services,” the company said. The FCC’s section 272 order does mention recording certain charges in its ARMIS filings, Qwest said - but if forbearance is granted, the company simply would record those charges elsewhere. “Thus, granting Qwest’s ARMIS forbearance will not eliminate or undermine the nonstructural safeguards that the Commission adopted in its Section 272 rulemaking order,” Qwest said.