FCC to address controversial business data services reform

April is “infrastructure month” at the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Ajit Pai wrote in a blog post outlining next month’s meeting agenda, though the most heated debate on the new agenda will be over controversial business data services reform.

At April’s FCC open meeting, commissioners will vote on new rules to revise business data service regulations. Many small businesses, schools and hospitals rely on special business data access lines to quickly transmit and receive large amounts of data. ATMs, for example, are reliant on such lines.

Before leaving the commission at the start of the year, former Chairman Tom Wheeler had pushed to lower price caps on such lines. He, however, dropped his pursuit of lower caps at the behest of Republicans.

{mosads}Telecommunication companies like AT&T and groups representing telecommunication interests like U.S. Telecom were staunchly opposed to Wheeler’s push to lower the caps. The telecom company railed against them in FCC filings during Wheeler’s tenure. The telecom trade association has comprehensively criticized Wheeler’s business data service proposal in a series of statements deriding them.

Wheeler’s justified his proposed 11 percent reduction on price caps on “over a decade of efficiency gains,” which allegedly resulted in lower expenses for telecommunications companies to rune data through their special access lines.

Current Chairman Pai has a different vision for business data service reform. He noted his disapproval of Wheeler’s reform pushes.

“Our goal should be ubiquitous competition, not universal rate regulation,” Pai wrote criticizing the plan. “Our guide should be the data — wherever it leads us — not an ideological drive to regulate.”

In a blogpost announcing the agenda on Thursday, Pai said that he would “balanced approach to reforming the rules governing this marketplace.”

“Where this competition exists, we will relax unnecessary regulation, thereby creating greater incentives for the private sector to invest in next-generation networks,” Pai wrote on Medium. “But where competition is still lacking, we’ll preserve regulations necessary to prevent anti-competitive price increases.”

After the FCC’s release of April’s agenda AT&T lauded Pai’s forthcoming proposal on business data services.

“The proposal appears to eliminate outdated regulations that hinder competitive markets, and proposes a rational regulatory framework where competition has yet to take hold,” AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of External and Legislative Affairs Bob Quinn wrote in a blog post.

“The BDS rules will finally evolve to reflect the increased level of competition and will encourage incremental fiber investment as the Pai FCC begins the process of delivering on regulatory reform promises made by the Trump Administration,” Quinn continued.

Incompas, a trade association representing smaller broadband providers, took a different tack, saying that Pai’s proposed revisions would problematic and anticompetitive.

“This is crony capitalism that favors broadband giants, is anti-business, and kicks consumers,” said Chip Pickering CEO of Incompas. “Based on past experience, this proposal will slap on average a 25 percent broadband price hike on small businesses, and a hidden monopoly tax on American businesses and consumers who will pay more every time they use an ATM machine or gas pump.