USTelecom’s Forbearance Petition to be Partially Granted in Circulating Order, Officials Say
A order on circulation at the FCC grants several unopposed items in USTelecom’s request for forbearance of several “outdated” legacy telecommunications regulations, FCC officials told us Tuesday. The Wireline Bureau will put out an order in the next day or two granting an additional 90 days to decide on the other items in USTelecom’s petition, the officials said. In its 73-page petition, USTelecom sought relief on an industry-wide basis from more than 150 rules, some of which the commission had already identified as unnecessary in its Biennial Review report (CD Feb 17p14).
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One such rule is 47 CFR 64.1, adopted in 1936 by an order of the FCC’s now defunct Telegraph Division. That rule was originally intended to address issues with claims against telegraph carriers arising from errors or delays in messages. It required telegraph providers to keep records on each damage claim. The FCC has been recommending elimination of this rule for many years without objection. The circulating order would eliminate that rule and make many other unopposed changes, the officials said.
The order won’t take any action on the requests for forbearance of more complicated rules, or rules affecting some unusual cases, the officials said. For example, rules on making certain facilities available on a competitive basis, or allocating different costs, won’t be dealt with in this order, they said. ILECs strongly supported the USTelecom proposal in comments filed last spring, but CLECs and state commissions generally opposed the requests, warning of potential harm to consumers. NASUCA, arguing against elimination of several rules, said USTelecom “exaggerates” several aspects of the supposedly competitive market.
USTelecom officials met with Wireline Bureau officials last week to clarify some of the relief it was seeking, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/boez5o). For example, the association said it wanted forbearance from any obligation to maintain a “master index of records,” which identifies where other records are maintained. The association also argued that “structural separation requirements” that apply to independent ILECs under Rule 64.1903 are unwarranted “because independent ILECs are non-dominant in the provision of in-region, interexchange services.”