FCC Likely to Cut Back on Phone Data Agency Seen Approving AT&T Request to Halt Yearly Service Reports
By AMY SCHATZ Wall Street Journal September 4, 2008 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122048636736397179.html?mod=2_1571_leftbox Federal regulators are on the verge of cutting back on the amount of information they collect from the country's largest phone companies about service quality and customer complaints. On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to approve a request from AT&T Inc. to allow the company to stop filing yearly reports on service quality, customer satisfaction and infrastructure investment. Similar requests by Verizon Communications Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc. are also expected to be approved soon. Consumer groups and state regulators have objected to the proposal, saying the quality data are valuable. The FCC will open up a related notice of proposed rulemaking that looks at how to improve the collection of data on complaints and other issues from phone companies, including wireless and Internet phone providers. The decision highlights a broader issue at the FCC, where data collection from phone and cable companies hasn't kept up with changes in the marketplace, as more consumers have switched to wireless and Internet phone services. Earlier this year, the agency revamped the information it collects from broadband providers and increased its definition of high-speed broadband to speeds of 768 kilobits per second or higher -- which is at the low end of what many consumers get from local cable or phone companies. A majority of the FCC's five commissioners, including Chairman Kevin Martin, agree it is time to stop requiring the reports and overhaul the reporting rules instead, according to people familiar with their thinking. An FCC spokesman declined to comment. An AT&T spokesman said the company wants to "eliminate reporting requirements that are no longer necessary or [are] redundant." He added that customer complaint information the company must file comes from the agency itself and state regulators while other data are filed to the FCC in other reports. It has been eight years since the FCC began looking at how to change the way it collects data from phone companies about costs and service quality, but little came from that effort. The phone companies say the annual reports are outdated and it is unfair to require the information since many of their competitors don't have to file similar reports. States compile much of the same data, particularly on consumer complaints and service outages, and release it more quickly than the FCC, although not in a uniform fashion. The agency collects some of the same information in other reports, such as service outages, but those data aren't made available to the public. Many state regulators and consumer groups oppose AT&T's request, saying the data collected are useful for monitoring the largest phone companies' infrastructure investments and service quality. "There's no way for consumers or regulators to know whether network quality is declining except for data like these," says Chris Murray, senior counsel at Consumers Union, one of several public interest groups asking the FCC to deny AT&T's request. "They're saying throw out the rules and figure out if we can fill in the gaps with something else later." Smaller phone companies have complained because they have relied on the data to oppose various phone company mergers and use some of the data to track costs associated with high-volume data lines. The FCC began collecting detailed cost data in 1987 and network reliability and consumer complaint data a few years later. Back then, most Americans subscribed to traditional phone services from one of a handful of large regional phone companies. The telecom landscape has changed significantly over the past two decades, however, with more consumers dumping traditional phone service in favor of wireless or Internet phones. The FCC's rules on which companies had to report that data haven't changed, however, with the result that AT&T, Verizon and Qwest are among a handful of companies required to file the information. In June 2007, AT&T asked the FCC to get rid of the requirement and if not that, at least make all phone providers file similar information. ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Internet: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 ******************************* * POST TO [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ******************************* Medianews mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
