ACA Suggests Leased Access Rule Changes to Media Bureau
Today's leased access rules put big administrative and procedural burdens on cable operators that rarely are recouped by the maximum fees operators can charge under the existing implicit rate formula, the American Cable Association told FCC Media Bureau Chief Michelle…
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.
Carey in a docket 07-42 ex parte meeting recapped in a posting Monday. ACA suggested several routes to reducing the cost of responding to requests for information about leased access, such as the FCC allowing cable operators to determine the rates they can charge for leased access via a uniform, nondiscriminatory "safe harbor" per channel rate card cable operators can use instead of calculating individualized rates. It also suggested cable operators be allowed to calculate leased access rates on a specific date and use those rates for all leased access agreements for the next three years, and that cable operators be allowed to simply affirm whether there's sufficient capacity to accommodate a time slot sought in a request rather than provide information about the total amount of capacity on a cable system. They also should be allowed to provide rates specific to the details of a request instead of a complete schedule of actual full- and part-time leased access rates, it said.