The Regulatory Mix - Wednesday, February 11, 2015

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

Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) has introduced the “Federal Communications Commission Process Reform Act of 2015.” The legislation, which closely tracks legislation approved in the House and introduced in the Senate each of the past two Congresses, is intended to bring transparency, accountability, and predictability to the FCC. Among other things the bill would:

• Provide more opportunities for the public to see pending FCC action by publishing the exact rule or amendment to a rule for at least 21 days and by allowing any Commissioner to ask for a vote on any order issued by a bureau.
• Reform the “sunshine” rules to allow a bipartisan majority of Commissioners to meet for collaborative discussions subject to transparency safeguards.
• Require the FCC to identify a market failure, consumer harm, or regulatory barrier to investment before adopting economically significant rules and to demonstrate that the benefits of regulation outweigh the costs.
• Require the FCC to establish performance measures for new program activities.

Colorado

The PUC has announced in a letter sent to CLECs and ILECs that Solix has been engaged to perform the administrative duties to receive and process the TRS forms and payments. This change became effective February 1, 2015. Until notified otherwise, LECs should continue to file their TRS forms with the PUC while simultaneously sending them to Solix. For year 2015, this should be done under Proceeding Number 15M-004T. Solix will send information for reporting and payment remittances directly to the carriers.