Wireline Bureau Tweaks Procedures for States to Access Form 477 Data
The FCC Wireline Bureau modified procedures for state commissions to access nonpublic Form 477 subscription data. “Each commission wishing to access, or to continue to access, shared data for its state must execute an updated data-sharing letter of agreement,” the…
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FCC said in a public notice Thursday in docket 11-10. The revisions are part of the bureau’s modernization of the secure online repository for the shared data, it said. What states may do with carriers’ Form 477 data has been central to a court dispute between telecom companies and the California Public Utilities California and The Utility Reform Network (see 1609160054). “This notice proves the point that the CPUC and TURN were making before the federal court,” TURN staff attorney Christine Mailloux emailed Thursday. “It was never the FCC’s intent to prohibit state commissions from using Form 477 data in their own proceedings or to disclose this data under specific circumstances and proper protections.” The new form letter clarifies that FCC and bureau rules “are primarily concerned with unlimited ‘public’ disclosure of the data through a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] or state public records process than the scenario we have in this California case,” she said. But the FCC notice doesn’t address a state’s authority to require regulated entities to provide data to the state commission and then share that data under protection to third parties, she said. Rather, the FCC notice appears to apply only when a state commission requests Form 477 data directly from the FCC, she said.