WASHINGTON-The mobile-phone industry must pay 26 cents per wireless subscriber to the Federal Communications Commission as part its assessment for regulatory fees, the FCC said on July 25.
The 26 cents per subscriber, based on 141.8 million subscribers, will mean that the wireless industry will pay nearly $37 million of the $269 million the FCC is required by Congress to collect in regulatory fees.
The FCC agreed to abandon a plan to increase the commercial mobile radio service messaging service regulatory fee. The agency had proposed increasing the current 8 cents per unit to 11 cents per unit.
The American Mobile Telecommunications Association successfully fought the increase. “The proposed increase rate was an increase of 37.5 percent over the 2002 fee and a more than 100 percent increase over the 2001 fee of 5 cents per unit,” said AMTA. “We noted that most of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau activities in recent years had been devoted to matters relating to broadband CMRS, not the types of systems that fall within the messaging service category.”
The Democrats on the commission, although agreeing to the regulatory fee assessment for this year, expressed concern that the fee was based on previous fee formulas.
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein specifically pointed out that Congress expected the commission to award fees based on the number of employees used to regulate an industry sector.
“I disagree with the methodology used to determine the actual fees assessed in this item,” said Adelstein. The Communications Act “requires that assessed fees be derived by determining the full-time equivalent number of employees performing these regulatory activities. … We essentially rely on repeated proportionate increases of the preceding year’s schedule, adjusted to reflect increases or decreases in payment units.”
Each year, Congress requires the FCC to collect fees based on its regulatory activities. These fees are in addition to licensing fees and auction receipts.
