FCC Posts Cable Rate Regulation Item and Others Set for Votes at June 26 Meeting
The FCC on Thursday posted the three items set for votes at the commission’s June 26 meeting, all of which are aimed at cutting regulations. It will consider cutting cable TV rules and an engineering requirement tied to the agency’s broadband data collection, as well as addressing text telephone-based telecom relay service rules.
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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr acknowledged Wednesday that the outlook for votes is unclear given the departures of Commissioners Nathan Simington and Geoffrey Starks (see 2506040061).
While the agency says it knows of no local community regulating cable TV rates, the cable regulation draft order on the June agenda would exempt cable systems that have 15,000 or fewer subscribers and are owned by small cable companies serving 400,000 or fewer total subscribers from its rate regulation rules. It also clarifies that FCC rate regulation rules apply to residential subscribers only, not nonresidential customers like restaurants, motels and stores.
In addition, the order would limit cable equipment rate regulation to equipment -- such as converter boxes and remotes -- used by basic-tier-only subscribers to receive regulated basic service and would revise its methodology for newly regulated cable operators to establish initial regulated basic-tier rates.
Neither NCTA nor ACA Connects specifically sought basic-tier rate regulation in their “Delete Delete Delete” docket comments in April. NCTA mentioned cable rate regulation but, under that heading, asked the agency to modify or eliminate requirements “that unfairly skew the marketplace, including requirements to include certain programming in the basic tier and to require consumers to purchase a basic tier to obtain other programming.” Neither cable industry group commented Thursday.
The draft order heavily relies on years-old comments that the cable industry and others filed in response to a Further NPRM adopted by commissioners in 2018, which proposed revising the agency's cable rate rules regime for basic-tier regulation by local franchise authorities (see 1810230037).
The proposed broadband data collection order would cut the requirement that a corporate officer and either a corporate engineering officer or certified professional engineer must certify data filings. The draft notes that in every filing cycle so far, the agency waived the more stringent engineering requirement. Most groups supported changing the requirement last year when the FCC sought comment on a request to do so by USTelecom and the Competitive Carriers Association (see 2309050065).
The draft lays out requirements for who can certify the data, allowing three options, including a corporate officer with an engineering degree “who has direct knowledge of and responsibility for the carrier’s network design and construction” or “an engineer possessing a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree in electrical engineering, electronic engineering, or another similar technical discipline, and at least seven years of relevant experience in broadband network design and/or performance.”
The third option is “an employee or agent with specialized training relevant to broadband network engineering and design, deployment, and/or performance, and at least 10 years of relevant experience in broadband network engineering, design, and/or performance.”
According to the draft, “we find that the qualified engineer standard outlined above, in combination with the Commission’s verification and audit authority and challenges from the public, provides the Commission with the necessary tools to ensure that [collected] data are accurate and timely.”
The FCC declines to examine other rules to ensure accurate data, as proposed by NTCA. “We note that Commission staff has initiated over a thousand data verification inquiries to date, which have resulted in updates to hundreds of provider submissions and a clearer picture of broadband availability in every state and territory,” a footnote says.
The agency also released the draft of an NPRM that proposes changes to telecom relay service (TRS) rules, eliminating a requirement from 1991 that providers support the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format. “Today, the ASCII format is rarely used by consumers who rely on TTY devices, manufacturers of TTY devices no longer include support for the ASCII format, and TTY-based TRS providers are unnecessarily incurring costs to keep their hardware and software systems compatible with the ASCII format,” the draft says.
The draft notes that the FCC granted T-Mobile and Hamilton conditional waivers of the requirement in November for two years or until the FCC addresses the issue (see 2411250037). Currently, “TTYs generally use the Baudot coding format,” and “almost all TTY conversation is transmitted in Baudot,” it says.