Wireline Groups Call Regulatory Fee Changes Too Slow
USTelecom and the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance cited remarks by acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps on the need for a broad overhaul of how regulatory fees are assessed to argue that the commission’s May proposal falls short. A commission rulemaking as it assessed fees for fiscal 2009 drew a handful of other comments, most focused on narrow points.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
USTelecom repeated arguments that under the current system, carriers in the Interstate Telecommunications Service Providers category pay too much. The group cited a statement by Copps when the notice was released that “it is hard to believe that we are still generally assessing fees based on the communications marketplace as it existed in 1994.” The FCC should have changed how it assesses fees in time for the fiscal year 2009 collection cycle instead of waiting for next year, USTelecom said. The group figures that barely 21 percent of full-time FCC employees in the four core bureaus are assigned to the Wireline Bureau. But, based on the FCC’s calculations, almost 47 percent of costs were assigned to the wireline services category for fiscal 2008.
“While USTelecom appreciates Acting-Chairman Copps’ determination to address the inequalities of the current methodology in time for the 2010 assessments, we urge the Commission to move forward with modifications now for the FY 2009 assessments,” USTelecom said. “The Commission sought comments on such changes more than a year ago and has a fresh, full and complete record assembled in the Further Notice upon which it could reform assessments for fiscal year 2009.”
Although the FCC has eliminated silos for the most part and treats wireline, wireless and cable the same in most other ways, how regulatory fees are assessed is a throwback to an earlier era, USTelecom said, saying the three technologies compete vigorously for customers. “The Commission has been diligent in reforming its ’silo’ based rules to establish parity among the providers utilizing these platforms in order to ensure competitive neutrality and send the correct pricing signals to consumers choosing among the competing platforms,” the group said. “The same discipline should be applied to the regulatory fee process.”
The ITTA said the FCC budget increased 7.6 percent from 2006-2007 but the average fee attributable to a wireline customer increased 18 percent. The group cited speeches by Commissioners Robert McDowell and Jonathan Adelstein seeking an overhaul of regulatory fees. “The latest Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposal ’to retain the established methods and policies that the Commission has used to collect regulatory fees in the past …’ is contrary to sitting Commissioners’ support for reform,” the group said.
AT&T emphasized how a new international bearer circuit system fee for international submarine cables will be handled by the commission. A May order made a big change - a new method for assessing submarine cable regulatory fees (CD March 25 p3). AT&T, which supported the change, said the FCC should expand payment procedures and include a separate cable fee assessment notification for each cable system sent to all licensees for a particular cable. “Such notifications would ensure that all licensees for each cable are informed of the new methodology and their payment responsibilities and would provide clear notice of the amount due for circulation to other consortium members,” AT&T said. “The licensees for each cable, together with the other consortium members, would then allocate the fee according to commercial terms.”
Sprint Nextel also commented on submarine cable fees, but to argue that they shouldn’t apply to non-common carrier traffic. Sprint said “there is no question” that the traffic carried over the circuits, including simple text messaging to uploads and downloads of huge amounts of data, should be viewed as an information service, not a traditional telecom service. “The Commission has rarely applied regulatory fees to information services,” Sprint said.
The American Association Of Paging Carriers said the FCC shouldn’t raise fees on paging services, which are at the levels set in fiscal 2002. “Absent the Commission determining whether the fee for the paging industry properly should be reduced, as the industry believes it should, AAPC respectfully submits that maintaining the fee at the existing level is the minimum reasonable and appropriate action the Commission should take again this year,” the group said.
The American Cable Association asked the FCC not to raise fees paid by systems with fewer than 5,000 subscribers, as it proposes to do through a general increase in cable fees. “For small cable operators, who already bear a heavier regulatory burden than competing DBS providers, this increase, when added to all the other mandated fees and burdens, limits the resources available to provide more advanced services to their rural customers, including high speed Internet access,” the group said.