Verizon, Other Price-Cap Carriers Push FCC to Kill ARMIS in AT&T Order
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.
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Officials from Verizon, Citizens, Windstream and Embarq met Tuesday with Commissioner Deborah Tate, according to a Verizon ex parte. The carriers urged the FCC to use the AT&T ARMIS order due next month to extend cost-assignment rules granted AT&T and kill ARMIS reports “for all providers,” said Verizon. Last week, those carriers and AT&T met with Commissioner Michael Copps and aides to Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioner Robert McDowell, urging ARMIS relief for all price-cap carriers. The FCC circulated a draft order Friday (CD Aug 20 p7), but it’s unclear what it recommends. Verizon, Qwest, Embarq, Frontier and Citizens have ARMIS forbearance petitions of their own. Verizon’s is next up. Nov. 26 marks the 12-month deadline, which the FCC could extend 90 days.
The AT&T ARMIS petition has drawn little fire lately. Since the late April cost-assignment order, foes’ only activity in the ARMIS proceeding was a July 30 meeting between CompTel’s Karen Reidy and Scott Deutchman, aide to Commissioner Michael Copps. Sprint Nextel, also a player in the cost-assignment rules proceeding, hasn’t participated in the AT&T ARMIS proceeding. But that wireless carrier believes the FCC should keep and strengthen ARMIS as a “reliable source of data about whether the market is competitive or not,” a spokesman said. A CompTel spokeswoman declined to comment.
ARMIS forbearance foes were dispirited by the April cost-assignment rules order, an industry source told us. Opponents have little new to say, the source said. The ARMIS and cost-assignment issues intertwine. ARMIS reports contain data that carriers collect in compliance with cost-assignment rules. If a carrier faced no cost-assignment rules, there could be no data to provide in ARMIS reports, the source said. Opponents probably will file next week urging the FCC to deny AT&T forbearance “for all reasons previously indicated,” the source said. Opponents likely will argue that the FCC shouldn’t grant ARMIS relief until it knows what cost-assignment data still will be collected under a compliance plan that the FCC forced AT&T to write as a condition to the April order, the source said. The plan, filed July 24, still needs Wireline Bureau approval.
Two challenges to the April cost-assignment order are pending. Sprint Nextel, CompTel, Time Warner Telecom and the AdHoc Telecommunications Users Committee asked the FCC to reconsider, while the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (CD June 30 p2).