The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court, issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Regulatory Bulletin.
TELECOM
FCC
VRS service
The FCC deferred, for six months, the effective date of the new 30-second standard governing how quickly a video relay service (VRS) provider must respond to a consumer’s request to make a VRS call. As a result, the current speed-of-answer rule, requiring that 85 percent of all VRS call attempts be answered within 60 seconds, measured daily, will remain applicable to all providers through December 31, 2014. The FCC said that providers and consumer groups had convinced it that compelling providers to meet a 30-second response time by July 1st, only six months after the current 60-second time standard took effect, could be unnecessarily disruptive to providers’ ability to offer high quality service.
Annual Adjustment of Revenue Thresholds
The FCC announced the inflation-adjusted 2013 revenue thresholds used for classifying carrier categories for various accounting and reporting purposes: distinguishing Class A carriers from Class B carriers; and distinguishing larger Class A carriers from mid-sized carriers. The revenue threshold between Class A carriers and Class B carriers is $150.2 million. (The 2012 threshold was $150.5 million.) The revenue threshold between larger Class A carriers and mid-sized carriers is $8.9 billion. Among other things, carriers classified as Class B must file an Annual Report of Carriers and Certain Affiliates.
Sunshine Period for July 11 Meeting
Due to the July 4th holiday, the FCC said it will waive the sunshine period prohibitions in its rules. Therefore, interested parties will be able to make presentations regarding the items scheduled for consideration at its July 11 meeting until 11:59pm on Monday, July 7, 2014. Among the items scheduled to be discussed at that meeting are a Report and Order establishing a budget and a methodology for selecting winning applications for the Connect America rural broadband experiments and a Report and Order to modernize the E-Rate program. See the Regulatory Mix dated 6/23/14.
