Sorenson, CaptionCall Oppose IDT Bid for FCC Review of Bureau TRS Fund Order
Sorenson Communications and CaptionCall urged the FCC to deny IDT Telecom's request for review of a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau order setting the telecom relay service (TRS) fund's 2015-16 budget and industry contribution factor. IDT, which pays into the…
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fund, petitioned the full commission to review the bureau order because it partially funded intrastate and other domestic IP-based relay services from the interstate and international jurisdictions, which the company said violated the Communications Act (see 1507290024). In a Tuesday filing in docket 10-51, Sorenson and CaptionCall called IDT's arguments "meritless." As an initial matter, they said, IDT's request was outside the scope of a bureau-level proceeding, challenging a rate methodology set by the full commission; if IDT wanted to change the rules, they said it should have filed a petition for rulemaking. They said IDT was also wrong on the policy merits: "The Communications Act gives the Commission wide discretion over the funding of the TRS program, and the Commission has reasonably exercised that discretion."