Communications Daily is a Warren News publication.

FCC Regulatory Fee Tweaks, Consolidation Urged

Wireline and wireless providers should pay FCC regulatory fees under one umbrella, said the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance. In comments on an FCC rulemaking, ITTA and others urged it to recalibrate fees so they better reflect technology convergence and agency organizational changes.

Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article

Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!

ITTA cited an “ever-increasing disparity” between wireline and wireless fees. From 1999 to 2008, wireline regulatory fees “nearly tripled,” while wireless fees fell 47 percent, it said. That shouldn’t be, because convergence has enabled the technologies to offer similar services, the group said. For cross-over issues not solved by wireline-wireless consolidation, FCC bureau chiefs should estimate the impact on various industries, and assess fees accordingly, ITTA said.

Verizon and NCTA urged the FCC to require all video providers to pay fees based on subscriber count. Cable TV now pays based on subscriber count, while satellite TV pays by the number of space stations it operates. So satellite providers pay less than cable providers, Verizon said. Incumbent local exchange carriers providing video not classified as a cable service pay no fees. For regulatory fee purposes, the FCC classifies Verizon FiOS TV as a cable service, but doesn’t, for example, deem AT&T U-verse as such. Satellite TV providers rejected the approach, saying they aren’t regulated as much as cable providers (CD Sept 29 p15). An AT&T spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Subscriber-based fee collection also should apply to all voice providers, NCTA said. Using the numbers-based approach now used with wireless also would be acceptable, it said. “A numbers-based or subscriber-based approach is superior to a revenue-based approach because it eliminates the need for arbitrary allocations of revenue among services, which is important in a market in which customers buy bundled packages of services.”

FCC regulatory fee assessment methodology should reflect bureau reorganization, wireline carriers said. Bureau costs are allocated by counting full-time employees, but the FCC hasn’t updated FTE figures since 1994. Since then, the FCC has created new bureaus and reshuffled existing ones. “Use of outdated FTE numbers predating those organizational and resource shifts ignores those significant changes,” said USTelecom. It rejected an approach that would categorize fees based on six strategic FCC goals, instead of FTEs, terming a goals-driven method too subjective and complex.

PCIA urged the FCC to reassess its fees for industries with declining user bases. Declining industries demand less FCC attention and should get fee relief, the group said. To identify a “declining industry,” the FCC should consider the steepness of the decline and the industry’s ability to pass fees to customers, it said. The commission should define “declining” as a 50 percent drop over a five-year period, as the agency did with the CMRS messaging industry, PCIA said. Declining industries unable to pass fees to customers should get “special consideration” for relief, it said.

Paging carriers said they should pay “no higher” than one-seventh the fee broadband cellular and PCS carriers pay. The change would reduce paging carriers’ messaging fee to $0.025 per unit from $0.08, said the American Association of Paging Carriers. It said the 1:7 ratio reflects the industries’ relative average revenue per subscriber.