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 Briefing.
TELECOM
US Congress
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation announced it will hold a full committee hearing entitled “Removing Barriers to Wireless Broadband Deployment” on Wednesday, October 7 at 10:00 a.m. Witness testimony, opening statements, and a live video of the hearing will be available on www.commerce.senate.gov. In July, the Commerce Committee convened its first wireless broadband hearing entitled “Wireless Broadband and the Future of Spectrum Policy.” This series of hearings is designed to culminate with long-term broadband legislation.
FCC
The FCC announced that the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (“CAIDA”), a research group at University of California at San Diego, has been identified as the Independent Measurement Expert (IME) referenced in accordance with the AT&T Inc. and DIRECTV merger. See the Regulatory Mix dated 7/28/15. The IME is responsible for establishing a schedule and the methodology for the merged entity to report certain performance characteristics of traffic exchanged at Internet Interconnection Points located within the United States. CAIDA is a collaborative undertaking among organizations in the commercial, government, and research sectors that aims to promote greater cooperation in the engineering and maintenance of a robust, scalable global Internet infrastructure.
Special Access Data Collection
The FCC released a list of additional parties that have signed an acknowledgement of confidentiality (AOC) and that seek to review the data gathered through the FCC’s special access data collection (SADC). The list includes persons that signed AOCs since September 17, 2015, or were not included in previous Public Notices. Companies that submitted confidential or highly confidential information in response to the SADC have until October 6, 2015, to object to the disclosure of their data and information to any of the parties on the list. TMI Briefing Service subscribers see Briefing dated September 30, 2015.
Indiana
The Commission has opened Cause No. 44681 as the next triennial review of the Indiana USF. In A prehearing conference and technical conference is scheduled for October 21 , 2015. The purpose and scope of the triennial review is to: 1) ensure the operations of the IUSF are meeting the Commission's objectives of preserving and advancing universal service in Indiana; 2) ensure that universal service is continuing to be made available at rates that are just reasonable and affordable and reasonably comparable to rates for basic residential and single line business local exchange service in urban areas; 3) ensure that the processes, funding levels, size, operation and administration of the IUSF remain adequate and sufficient; and 4) review the operation of IUSF relative to the federal universal service fund as may be appropriate. The most recent triennial review of the IUSF was completed on October 10, 2012.
