USTelecom filed a Paperwork Reduction Act challenge to the FCC’s...
USTelecom filed a Paperwork Reduction Act challenge to the FCC’s “Study Area Boundary Order” Thursday, arguing the Wireline Bureau didn’t sufficiently justify the data collection order, and “severely underestimates the burden” to price-cap ILECs (http://xrl.us/bn9epe). The Wireline Bureau in November…
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passed an order requiring ILECs to submit certified study area boundary data in “esri shapefile” format (CD Nov 9 p17). The commission had said the exchange boundary data would help it implement universal service reforms: the high-cost loop support benchmarking rule, which limits the capital costs and operating expenses a rate-of-return carrier can recover for HCLS; and the unsubsidized competitive overlap rule, which phases out a rate-of-return carrier’s universal service support where unsubsidized competitors offer voice and broadband services in the entire study area. But those rules “only apply to rate-of-return ILECs,” USTelecom said. “Even the Bureau acknowledges as much. Exchange area boundary data of price cap ILECs are not needed to enforce rules directed to rate-of-return ILECs, and the Bureau does not claim otherwise.” Because the information collection has no “practical utility,” it cannot pass muster under the PRA, USTelecom said. The bureau’s PRA analysis also underestimates the “substantial burdens” of the proposed information collection, given that such data are not available at the level of accuracy the commission seeks, USTelecom said. It would take an ILEC far more than the agency’s estimated 26 hours and $489 to comply, the association said. “Nobody maintains data at that level of accuracy,” a USTelecom spokeswoman said. “It would be practically hard to comply with, and particularly hard for small companies."