WASHINGTON-The Personal Communications Industry Association has taken another stab at urging the Federal Communications Commission to become less regulatory and less burdensome.
“PCIA is continuing to find ways to press for deregulation,” said Mary McDermott, PCIA senior vice president and chief of staff for government relations. “Targeting these 71 administrative regulations is our latest attempt in PCIA’s campaign to ensure that the full competitive potential of the wireless industry can be realized.”
The 71 administrative regulations were detailed in a July 31 letter to Daniel Phythyon, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. The letter comes a little more than a month after the FCC mostly rejected a petition from PCIA that it forbear from enforcing certain regulations on wireless carriers.
The 71 regulations are divided into three categories: noncontroversial issues dealing with the universal licensing system (ULS), administrative rules that may be eliminated without prior notice or comment, and rules that may require notice or comment before being eliminated.
PCIA believes the FCC should eliminate some of the regulatory issues surrounding ULS so the agency can turn to the more controversial issues involved in fully implementing the system.
Eliminating these regulations “would help to streamline the regulatory burden imposed on wireless licensees at an earlier date, while permitting the [FCC] to focus its energies on the resolution of the remaining universal licensing system proposals,” according to the association.
The list of 71 regulations does not include regulations governing competitive bidding procedures, interference and equipment restrictions, and coverage and construction requirements.
TOCSIA and calling party pays
In addition to the letter to Phythyon, PCIA and others last week commented on a notice of proposed rule making on the elimination of regulations regarding the Telephone Operator Consumer Services Improvement Act (TOCSIA). PCIA had requested total forbearance from TOCSIA in its 1997 petition but was granted only partial relief in June. TOCSIA generally is seen as a pay-phone and hotel-phone issue, but it applies to the wireless industry via rental CMRS phones and airplane phones.
PCIA said TOCSIA requirements never were intended to be applied to the wireless industry. “PCIA believes that the [FCC] erred in adopting only limited forbearance relief [in the TOCSIA context]. In doing so, the [FCC] unreasonably discounted substantial record evidence supporting a grant of broad forbearance, such as the complete absence of consumer complaints, the presence of vigorous competition, and the impracticality of applying these obligations in the CMRS context,” PCIA said in its comments.
Omnipoint Corp. went a step further and asked the FCC to clarify that TOCSIA would not be applied to calling party pays (CPP) should the FCC establish this system for the CMRS industry. The wireless industry has said, and Omnipoint reiterated, CPP would help spur competition between wireless and wireline companies because callers using wireless handsets would not have to pay to receive a call. This is the general rule in the long-distance industry.
Additionally, Omnipoint said since the wireless subscriber today normally pays to receive calls, a transitional message will be necessary to alert wireless handset callers they would be charged for the call.
Omnipoint stressed, however, that due to the costs of implementing and maintaining a caller notification system, that system should only be temporary.
