CenturyLink Urges FCC to Weigh 'Far-Reaching' BDS Fallout; Comcast, BT Also File
CenturyLink said the FCC should effectively look before it leaps into new regulation of business data serves. The BDS rule changes the FCC is considering "would have far-reaching operational and procedural impacts, broadly affecting business systems, regulatory procedures, and compliance…
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efforts and necessitating an appropriate implementation glide-path," said a CenturyLink filing Thursday in docket 16-143 on a meeting with Wireline Bureau and Office of General Counsel staffers. "Proposals now under consideration would require multiple follow-up proceedings and would consume significant agency resources. The competitive market test, for example, will require close monitoring of the services provisioned, which in turn will entail extensive ongoing work by ILECs and CLECs alike." The incumbent telco said "transitions from one regime to another tend to take substantially longer than expected," and it attached a 20-page overview of BDS complexities that it said the FCC must consider. BT Americas provided additional information (some of it redacted) supporting its proposal that "minimum revenue commitments ('MRCs') should be capped at 50 percent or less with respect to contracts entered into with ILECs and/or their affiliates" providing dominant services, including BDS, and nondominant services. The MRC levels in existing ILEC BDS tariffs and contracts are generally set at or above 80 percent of a customer’s previous spend," said a BT filing. "This commitment level does not allow a wholesale purchaser to migrate BDS from ILEC circuit-based data services to packet-based data services sold by either ILECs or CLECs." Comcast discussed what it saw as the limitations of prescriptive rate regulation with General Counsel Howard Symons, Wireline Bureau Chief Matt DelNero, an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and other staffers. The commission should adopt NCTA's proposal to apply rate regulation only where monopoly conditions are present and competition is unlikely, said a Comcast filing. If a regulatory backstop is needed to ensure wholesale BDS access, Comcast suggested the FCC give providers "a baseline duty to deal on a commercially reasonable basis," similar to its wireless data-roaming requirement.