Industry Backs FCC Push to Relax International Reporting Duties; Some Seek More Relief
Industry parties urged the FCC to scrap international traffic and revenue reporting duties, with many also calling for eliminating international circuit capacity reporting duties. "These anachronistic reporting requirements are largely holdover requirements for enforcing settlement rates and regulatory fee requirements…
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and policies that the Commission has eliminated," said a filing of an international carrier/infrastructure group (North American Submarine Cable Association, DoCoMo Pacific, Globe Telecom, GTI and Level 3). "They impose often significant resource burdens on international carriers and infrastructure owners with little or no corresponding benefits, as the reports duplicate existing data collections, are stale upon release, and reflect often inaccurate and inconsistent data." Twelve comments were posted Wednesday and Thursday in docket 17-55 on commission proposals to eliminate the annual international traffic and revenue reports and streamline annual international circuit capacity reports (see 1703230042). A March 23 NPRM, citing the agency's biennial review of telecom regulations, said retaining the circuit capacity reports "might be warranted because the benefits appear to exceed the costs of collecting the data." There was no opposition filed to the proposed easing of reporting duties, and seven commenters backed eliminating all the reports under review: AT&T, Inmarsat, Sprint, USTelecom, Verizon, the Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition and the carrier/infrastructure group. Inmarsat said if the circuit capacity duties are kept, the FCC should clarify they don't apply to "satellite operators like Inmarsat that do not provide dedicated transport capacity between two fixed points." The VON Coalition said any streamlining should ensure "non-common carrier licensees need file Circuit Capacity Reports only with respect to those submarine cables for which they hold a license." CTIA, Iridium, T-Mobile, TNZI USA and the SD family of companies (Satcom Direct, Satcom Direct Communications and Comsat) backed eliminating the international traffic and revenue reports. The SD companies also supported streamlining the circuit capacity reports.