By Randolph May
I couldn’t help suppressing a chuckle when I saw that Chairwoman Rosenworcel has circulated an item for consideration entitled “Jurisdictional Separations and Referral to the Federal-State Joint Board.
The item is in Docket No. 80-286.
If you’re familiar with the FCC’s docket numbering system, you’ll recognize that this proceeding was initiated in 1980. At the time, I was serving as the Commission’s Associate General Counsel. It was a long time ago.
As the Commission has explained many dozens of times in boilerplate language in the 44 years since the initiation of Docket No. 80-286: “Jurisdictional separations is the process by which incumbent local exchange carriers (incumbent LECs) apportion regulated costs between the intrastate and interstate jurisdictions.”
In short, jurisdictional
separations is part of the process for FCC regulation of the rates of certain
local telephone companies that are still required to file tariffs. The process
starts with the local exchange carriers assigning regulated costs to various
categories of plant and expenses, with these
costs often further disaggregated among service subcategories. Then, the costs
assigned to each category are apportioned between the interstate and intrastate
jurisdictions.
Don’t worry! It is not my intent here to recite even a minute portion of the sometimes nearly incomprehensible twists and turns of this docket over four decades and counting.
But I do want to make a couple serious points. First, with all the dramatic competitive changes that have occurred in the communications marketplace since 1980, including in the “local” “telephone” market, is it still necessary for the FCC to be regulating the rates of what we still call “local exchange carriers”? If so, for how much longer?
And second, and more importantly, even a passing knowledge of the FCC’s cumbersome process for continuing to regulate the rates of local telephone companies should be more than sufficient to convince anyone of the importance of not allowing the Commission or the states to rate regulate broadband Internet access services. To coin a phrase: No how, no way!
Finally, I assume Docket No. 80-286 may be in the running for the Guinness World Records for the oldest, still active administrative agency docket. Someone else can research that, because I shudder to think!
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