FCC Republicans Seen Voting for AT&T ARMIS Forbearance
FCC commissioners seem set to vote 3-2 to grant AT&T forbearance from reporting requirements, though decisions aren’t final, agency officials said Tuesday. And they'll likely extend by 90 days the deadline on a more expansive ARMIS forbearance petition filed by Qwest, we're told. The AT&T draft order, now circulating, would grant AT&T most of the Automated Reporting Management Information System deregulation it seeks and extend that to other price-cap carriers (CD Aug 27 p7). With votes due Saturday, CompTel and Sprint are sounding alarms on the FCC’s apparent intention to give ARMIS relief to multiple carriers.
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Commissioners view the AT&T ARMIS petition as they did that carrier’s forbearance petition on cost-assignment rules, an FCC official told us. In April, FCC Republicans voted to grant AT&T cost-assignment rules forbearance, with Democratic commissioners dissenting. The ARMIS and cost-assignment issues are related, because the allocation rules require carriers to collect data conveyed in ARMIS reports.
The 12-month clock on Qwest’s broader ARMIS forbearance petition ends Sept. 13, a deadline the FCC probably will extend 90 days, a commission official said. The agency usually releases draft orders on forbearance cases three weeks ahead of voting deadlines, but of late the Qwest petition has seen little FCC attention, said another agency official.
CompTel and Sprint Nextel want the FCC to deny ARMIS forbearance petitions. In a joint letter to commissioners’ advisors and the Wireline Bureau, the foes said they are “especially concerned” that the FCC might use the AT&T order to grant relief to other price-cap carriers. The draft would extend AT&T ARMIS relief to Verizon, Qwest, Embarq, Frontier, Citizens and Windstream, we're told. “The other ILECs’ petitions address different reports -- some of which have not been previously considered for forbearance -- and are on different statutory timeframes,” CompTel and Sprint said. “To take action as sweeping as the petitioning parties request, the Commission will have to address, with particularity and in a carefully considered manner, the individual merits of each of the pending forbearance petitions.”
Qwest and Verizon seek more sweeping ARMIS relief than does AT&T, noted CompTel and Sprint. AT&T wants relief from four non-cost-related ARMIS reports. Qwest and Verizon want to escape all eight, including cost-related reports.
ARMIS reports “continue to serve the public interest,” CompTel and Sprint said. “Procedures might be streamlined, but the information must continue to be available to support state and federal needs.” Among other things, reports help the FCC and states monitor ILEC service quality, as well as network downtime and repairs, they said. The service quality report “acts as a check on discriminatory practices in service provisioning and facilitates the detection of anticompetitive conduct,” they said. Sprint uses the data to check whether ILECs treat their unbundled network elements- based and interexchange businesses the same as their own local and long distance operations, they said.