March 31 FCC Votes to Include Plan to Deregulate Remaining Phone Access Charges

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a plan to deregulate what he calls telephone access charges, among items tentatively up for a vote at commissioners' March 31 meeting. It would detariff "the last handful of interstate end-user charges that remain subject to FCC regulation," he blogged Monday afternoon.

"Under this proposal, the FCC would also prohibit all carriers from separately listing these charges" on customer bills, the chairman wrote. "Eliminating these line-item charges would make it easier for consumers to understand their phone bills and compare prices among voice service providers as well as help ensure that a carrier's advertised prices are closer to the prices that consumers actually pay." His blog post detailed the "alphabet soup" of such charges. Telecom groups didn't comment in the minutes after the disclosure.

The meeting also will have a vote on robocall/caller ID authentication, as Pai disclosed last week.

Among media items, one is a "proposal to make it easier for broadcast TV stations to use a distributed transmission system, or DTS." Pai noted the FCC majority had "encouraged" the industry to move to ATSC 3.0, and deployments are proceeding: "But there are concerns that the Commission's current rules inhibit expanded DTS deployments with the new standard."

Pai circulated an NPRM based on a proposal by America's Public Television Stations and NAB to seek comment on DTS and 3.0, he said. "We would look at amending the Commission's rules to permit, within certain limits, DTS signals to spill over beyond a station's authorized service area by more than the currently allowed 'minimal amount.'" Those two associations didn't comment immediately.