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

FCC

          FCC Open Meeting

       FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced the tentative agenda for the FCC’s next Open Meeting scheduled for June 24, 2016:

• Reforming Executive Branch Review Process of Certain FCC Applications and Petitions
• Involving Foreign Ownership:  A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to streamline and increase the transparency of the Executive Branch review of applications and petitions for national security, law enforcement, foreign policy and trade policy concerns.
• Adding Hurricane-Related Event Codes to the Emergency Alert System:  A Report and Order that would add new event codes covering extreme high winds and storm surges caused by Category 3 (and greater) hurricanes. 
• Improving Outage Reporting for Submarine Cables: A Report and Order to require submarine cable licensees to report communications network outages to the FCC.

           ICS Rates

Global Tel*Link Corporation (GTL) has asked the FCC for a 90-day waiver of two of its new inmate calling service (ICS) rules that are scheduled to take effect June 20, 2016 in jails.  The rules at issue prohibit per-call and per-connection charges and flat-rate calling.  GTL is requesting the waiver so it has time to complete contract renegotiations with its correctional facility customers in the jail category.  GTL said the temporary waiver will also allow it to “seek relief at the state level with respect to intrastate ICS rate cap regimes that will result in confiscatory rates once the per-call surcharge or flat-rate calling component is removed from the intrastate rate structure.  Some states have adopted intrastate ICS rate cap regimes that are based on flat-rate charges, utilize a mix of per-call surcharges and per-minute rates, or tied to tariffed rates of other carriers that use a mix of surcharges and per-minute rates.  In some instances, the remaining per-minute rate caps do not provide fair compensation to ICS providers once per-call or per-connection charges and flat-rate calling are removed from the rate structure.”  GTL said that grant of its request will not harm the public interest because “in most instances, permitting existing applicable per-call charges or flat-rate pricing to continue for this short period of time will result in consumers paying less than the Commission’s interim rate caps of $0.21/$0.25 and/or paying less than or no more than the currently effective intrastate rates.”

           SADC (aka Business Data Services Data Collection)

The FCC released another 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 an AOC since the FCC’s last Public Notice.  Companies that submitted confidential or highly confidential information in response to the SADC have until June 10, 2016, to object to the disclosure of their data and information to any of the parties on the list.

Massachusetts

In 2015 the Department of Telecommunications and Cable (DTC) approved a petition to raise the Enhanced 911 Surcharge.  The Final Order approved the E911 surcharge rate for FY2016 (effective July 1, 2015) and also set the E911 surcharge rate for FY 2017 (effective July 1, 2016).  TMI Briefing Service subscribers see Briefing dated 11/17/15.