Two cable associations challenged the FCC’s special access...

Two cable associations challenged the FCC’s special access data request, in a Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) filing with the Office of Management and Budget. The American Cable Association said the data collection would impose “excessive burdens on small cable operators in relation to the value of the information requested,” thereby violating the PRA. ACA’s members will need to spend “significant time and resources” to create databases of information requested by the FCC that the cable operators don’t currently have, the association said. The new efforts lie principally in the collection of data for fiber maps, location information, and billing and revenues information, ACA said. NCTA also challenged the order, calling the proposed data collection a violation of the letter and the spirit of the PRA. “It is a massive exercise in paperwork creation that will impose substantial new burdens on thousands of companies that have never before been subject to recordkeeping or reporting requirements with respect to the services that are the subject of the collection,” NCTA said. “The FCC has underestimated the burden of the collection by hundreds of thousands of hours and tens of millions of dollars.” Changes made by the FCC in response to its initial PRA notice have increased, not decreased, the overall burden on cable operators, NCTA said. In terms of hours required to comply with the request, this data collection is one of the 10 largest “on the entire roster of OMB-approved FCC collections,” it said. Making matters worse, “much of the requested data has no practical utility because it is too voluminous and too granular for the FCC to analyze in a meaningful and timely manner,” NCTA said.