FCC Finalizes Accounting Rules Forbearance for Top Telcos
The FCC freed AT&T, Verizon and Qwest from various accounting and reporting rules. Late Wednesday, the Wireline Bureau granted each of the carriers’ compliance plans, which showed how the companies will continue giving the commission usable accounting data the agency requests once orders granting them forbearance on cost-assignment and Automated Reporting Management Information System rules take effect.
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“AT&T, Verizon and Qwest have satisfied the condition that they obtain Bureau approval of compliance plans describing in detail how they will continue to fulfill their statutory and regulatory obligations,” the FCC said in a public notice. The plans’ approval satisfies the only remaining condition from the FCC orders last year granting the companies forbearance relief, an agency spokesman said.
Qwest is “pleased the FCC has quickly approved our compliance plan so that we can start phasing out these outdated and burdensome ARMIS reporting requirements,” said Shirley Bloomfield, senior vice president. Verizon and AT&T didn’t comment by our deadline.
It’s unclear how the FCC approval will impact reconsideration petitions filed by CompTel and others that challenged the regulator’s cost-assignment forbearance rulings. “As for other pending motions related to this issue, I cannot speculate on any potential impact that they may have at this time,” the agency spokesman said.
CompTel condemned the decision. “By rubber stamping the compliance plans submitted by AT&T, Qwest and Verizon, the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau has failed to ensure the integrity of these carriers’ accounting systems in the absence of cost-assignment rules and has therefore failed to mitigate the damage done by the Commission’s grant of forbearance from those rules,” said Karen Reidy, CompTel vice president, in a written statement Friday. “The Commission, at the very least, will be hindered in its ability to perform its statutory obligation of ensuring just, reasonable and nondiscriminatory rates for services for which these carriers have unquestionable market power.”
“The one-page order is hardly informative about why the FCC felt the compliance plans were OK,” said David Bergmann, chairman of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. It has an appeal of the FCC’s cost- assignment forbearance orders pending in the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit. “The approval of the compliance plans does not cure the error in the original orders,” said Bergmann. “The FCC should not have granted forbearance in the first place, especially given the national and state need to maintain cost allocation.”