The Regulatory Mix - Tuesday, April 15, 2014

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

The FCC released its annual report on telecommunications service between the United States and international points for the year 2012. The data are compiled from reports submitted to the FCC by U.S. carriers pursuant to Section 43.61 of the FCC’s rules. Among other things, the report shows that:

• The average per-minute rate for international calling charged by facilities-based U.S. common carriers fell 9% from $0.053 per minute in 2011 to $0.049 per minute in 2012. From 2000 to 2012, the per-minute rate decreased 90%, from $0.47 per minute to $0.049 per minute.

•  International “U.S.-billed” traffic – primarily traffic originating in the United States – increased 5.7%, from 73.7 billion minutes in 2011 to 77.9 billion minutes in 2012.

• Calls to five countries account for 65.9% of outgoing international U.S.-billed minutes. The five most heavily used routes in 2012 were U.S.-India (31.0%), U.S.-Mexico (17.4%), U.S.-Canada (11.8%), U.S.-Dominican Republic (3.0%), and U.S.-Colombia (2.7%)

• The number of reporting pure resale carriers increased 9.8% from 1,230 in 2011 to 1,351 in 2012. Pure resale minutes increased from 74.5 billion in 2011 to 90.4 billion in 2012. Resale providers’ billed revenues decreased 7.1%, from $5.6 billion in 2011 to $5.2 billion in 2012.

• Although minutes were up, total U.S.-billed revenues for international telephone, private line and other miscellaneous services (e.g., frame relay/ATM, switched Ethernet, TDM/TDMA, virtual private network, and virtual private line) decreased collectively 6%, from $4.5 billion in 2011 to $4.2 billion in 2012.

Interconnected VoIP services currently are not included in the report but will be in the future. Their inclusion in future reports will result in an increase in reported traffic.

Michigan

A new law has revised the  Michigan Telecommunications Act (MTA) to make it easier to discontinue providing local exchange and toll services and eliminate the requirement that operator service providers and payphone service providers file annual registration renewals. Other changes require the PSC to maintain a publicly available database of local and toll providers in Michigan and delay the recalculation of the Michigan Intrastate Switched Toll Access Restructuring Mechanism (ARM) until March 13, 2018. The new provisions became effective when filed with the Secretary of State on March 25, 2014. TMI Regulatory Bulletin Service subscribers see Michigan Bulletin dated 4/4/14.