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
US Congress
The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee will hold a hearing on June 10, 2015, to consider HR 805, the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act. Currently, the United States oversees the Domain Name System as part of a contract with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Last year, the administration asked the International Corporation for Assigned Named and Numbers (ICANN) to convene a multistakeholder group to explore ways to transition oversight of IANA to the Internet community.
As introduced, the legislation would prohibit the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) from relinquishing responsibility over the Internet domain name system until the Comptroller General of the United States submits to Congress a report on the role of the NTIA with respect to such system. The subcommittee will consider a bipartisan amendment to the DOTCOM Act in the form of a substitute bill that would:
- Require the administration to submit to Congress a report certifying that the transition plans meet the United States’ objective of global Internet openness;
- Require NTIA to certify that changes to ICANN’s bylaws that the multistakeholder process has required as conditions of the transition have been implemented;
- Provide safeguards designed to make ICANN more accountable to the Internet community; and
- Give Congress 30 legislative days to review NTIA’s report before NTIA is permitted to relinquish its role in IANA.
FCC
The FCC announced that the annual international traffic and revenue reports due July 31, 2015, will be filed through an electronic filing system. However, the online filing system is not yet ready to accept the filings. The FCC said it would issue a separate public notice announcing the filing window. It warned providers that any data submitted before the filing window opens will be deleted when the filing window opens. §43.62 of the FCC’s rules requires “each common carrier engaged in providing international telecommunications service, and each person or entity engaged in providing Voice over Internet Protocol service connected to the public switched telephone network” to file traffic and revenue reports by July 31 of each year, with revised reports, if needed, to be filed by October 31.
Colorado
The PUC has postponed both the comment dates and the hearing date in its review of rules regulating basic emergency service (Rules 2130 through 2159). TMI Regulatory Bulletin Service subscribers see Bulletin dated 5/18/15. The original date for initial comments to be filed was no later than June 5, 2015; reply comments were due no later than June 19, 2015. Initial comments are now due June 25, 2015, and the deadline to file reply comments was extended to July 17, 2015. The original schedule established a public hearing date of June 26, 2015. However, CenturyLink filed separate requests with the requesting that DORA and the PUC prepare and distribute a cost-benefit analysis and a regulatory analysis for each and every rule proposed in this Rulemaking Proceeding. In order to provide sufficient time to comply with the CenturyLink’s requested analysis the public comment hearing scheduled for June 26, 2015 was re-scheduled for August 17, 2015.
