NCTA Dismisses Opposition to FCC Extension of BDS Comment Deadlines
Opponents of extending comment dates in the business data service (BDS) proceeding "completely miss the mark," said an NCTA filing Friday in docket 05-25 urging an FCC extension. Suggestions there's a "high bar" to extensions are wrong, the cable group…
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said, noting its finding that the commission granted 85 percent of recent extension requests. Sprint opposed NCTA's extension request Tuesday (see 1605180028) and joint opposition was filed Thursday by the Competitive Carriers Association, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Free Press, Incompas, New America's Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge. NCTA disputed arguments that potential BDS regulation of cable has been within the scope of the proceeding since a 2012 Further NPRM. "The Commission captioned this proceeding 'Special Access for Price Cap Local Exchange Carriers' because it was considering changes to the rules that governed the rates for special access services provided by price cap local exchange carriers," NCTA said. It said the telco regulatory focus was consistent with FCC precedent under which new BDS entrants like cable are considered nondominant and generally aren't subject to rate regulation. FCC data collection from cable didn't mean cable was being targeted for regulation, but that the data could assist telco regulation, the group said. NCTA also disputed opposition to an extension based on industry having access to the data for months, which it called irrelevant to resolving many of the issues raised in the recent FNPRM (see Ref:1604280057]. It also said it was "disingenuous" for Sprint to argue that no other party was concerned about the proceeding's complexity, when even supportive FCC commissioners voiced such concerns. "It seems the only parties unwilling to acknowledge the complex nature of this proceeding are the CLECs, who apparently will continue pushing for as much rate regulation as possible, as quickly as possible, regardless of whether such regulation is warranted by the facts (like the fact that Sprint already has negotiated commercial Ethernet arrangements with cable operators and telephone companies that enable the company to cover 95 percent of the country)," NCTA said. Separately, CCA said that wireless industry ability to deploy 5G and IoT services depended on "fixing the broken BDS market" because of all the backhaul needed to connect tens of thousands of new cell sites.