Industry rhetoric on another AT&T forbearance petition on accounting rules has been one sided heading into its final two weeks. The FCC has until Sept. 6 to act on the petition seeking relief from Automated Reporting Management Information System (ARMIS) requirements. This week, Verizon and other price-cap carriers continued to argue for a sweeping order extending them the same relief as AT&T. But competitive carriers and others that opposed a related April FCC order granting AT&T forbearance from cost-assignment rules are mum.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
A draft order on AT&T’s forbearance petition seeking relief from Automated Reporting Management Information System (ARMIS) requirements is circulating the eighth floor, an FCC official told us. The draft appeared Friday, the source said. The FCC must vote on it by Sept. 6, according to the statutory deadline for forbearance petitions. Verizon and other price-cap carriers wanting ARMIS relief met last week with FCC officials, urging the commission to accept all their petitions and to grant all price-cap carriers the same relief (CD Aug 15 p5).
Telemarketers may no longer send prerecorded messages to consumers’ telephones, unless the consumer permitted them to do so, said the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC voted 4-0 to approve the ban, one of two Telemarketing Sales Rule amendments issued Tuesday. The second modifies the TSR’s method for calculating the maximum permissible level of call abandonment. “Just like the provisions of the Do Not Call Registry, these changes will protect consumers’ privacy,” said FTC Chairman William Kovacic. “The amendments now directly enable consumers to choose whether they want to receive prerecorded telemarketing calls.”
Qwest is mulling whether to refile for forbearance in the Phoenix metropolitan statistical area, according to a July 30 Qwest e-mail to Capitol Hill offices. Last month, the FCC denied a Qwest forbearance petition seeking unbundling relief in Phoenix, Denver, Seattle and Minneapolis. Shortly after, Qwest filed for review in the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit. “Qwest still believes that competition is rigorous in these markets,” said Brooks Brunson, Qwest federal relations director, in the e- mail.
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain wants less regulation and more tax breaks for the technology industry. After flak from Sen. Barack Obama, Ill., and other Democrats for lacking a tech plan, the Arizonan posted one on his Web site late Thursday. Soon after, ex-FCC Chairman Reed Hundt condemned the plan. At the same time the Democrats were talking technology, with a party platform draft.
FCC handling of an OrbitCom forbearance petition elicited more reaction Thursday. The agency withheld the petition from public view for nearly a year after OrbitCom filed it (CD Aug 14 p1). Wednesday, an FCC spokesman said a draft order on circulation denied the request “because the petition was so deficient on its face.” If that was so, the FCC should have acted sooner, said Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation, a think tank focused on deregulation and free-market policies. “That way, the petitioner, if it chose to do so, could have promptly refiled a beefed-up petition in an attempt to make its case,” he said. The FCC should reform the forbearance process “to prevent something going into effect without the commissioners actively voting on it,” said Dan Mitchell, legal vice president for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. “While we're not familiar with all of the details surrounding the OrbitCom proceeding, it seems to demonstrate that the drop dead date in forbearance proceedings can be problematic.”
The FCC circulated an order dismissing an OrbitCom forbearance request before it made the carrier’s petition public, acting nearly a year after Orbitcom filed the petition. The agency never posted a public notice seeking comment. The 12-month statutory forbearance deadline is Aug. 27. The situation raises red flags about FCC openness and the forbearance process, industry officials said in interviews.
Commissioners strongly prefer voting ahead of time on two circulating wireline items set for the Aug. 22 FCC meeting, a commission official said Tuesday. One such item is a rulemaking asking how to implement the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008, signed last month by President Bush. The other item seeks comment on ways to improve management and administration of the Universal Service Fund. The USF item responds to a GAO audit citing concerns about waste, fraud and abuse, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters earlier this month (CD Aug 5 p1).
An AT&T proposal to lower intrastate access rates to interstate terminating access rate levels is “deficient,” said the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. Commenting on an AT&T request for interim declaratory ruling and limited waivers related to intercarrier compensation and Universal Service Fund reform, NTCA urged the FCC to accept AT&T’s proposal only if it also adopts an NTCA plan filed last month (CD July 14 p9). NTCA agreed with AT&T that the FCC should move intrastate costs to interstate cost recovery rates including subscriber line charges or originating interstate access charges, and that the FCC should declare that Internet traffic must pay access charges. But NTCA said AT&T’s bid to lower intrastate access rates is “specifically tailored for price-cap carriers, and provides no relief to rural consumers served by [rate-of-return] carriers.” NTCA wants interstate access rates capped at current levels until a permanent access replacement mechanism is set. Access costs not recovered from capped rates would come from USF Interstate Common Line Support (ICLS), it said. NTCA filed comments two days ahead of a Thursday deadline. An AT&T spokesman said “comprehensive reform would fix the vast majority of the problems that these various petitions seek to resolve.”
Deaf interest groups, telecom relay providers and others argued details on an FCC plan to give 10-digit phone numbers to deaf people using Internet-based TRS services. They filed comments Friday on a rulemaking (CD June 26 p2) on the 10-digit numbering plan. The FCC sought comment on 911 and other issues, as well as how it might apply customer proprietary network information (CPNI), slamming and other customer privacy rules to relay providers. Relay providers have until Dec. 31 to implement a 10-digit plan.