CenturyLink: FCC Rate Cuts Could Be Crippling

CenturyLink says the Federal Communications Commission's new business data services (BDS) proposal could mean crippling rate cuts while ignoring evidence of competition. The company accused the FCC of a flawed and dangerous approach that lacked transparency. The FCC Oct 27 scheduled a vote for the Nov 17 public meeting on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's BDS revamp.

Initially the proposal was to impose ex ante (before the fact) price regulation on incumbents according to a geographic approach, but that was changed to the case-by-case model. On Oct 28, CenturyLink, which was no fan of the initial proposal, slammed the latest proposal and its incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) price caps, saying there was no basis for cuts in ILEC rates, period, and that the FCC was lowballing the cuts it was proposing. The FCC based its new approach to business broadband (formerly called "special access) on several years of data-collection, but CenturyLink says the commission's new proposal "suggests an intent to ignore" evidence of competition and impose not only a phased-in rate reduction but in some cases an additional, initial, rate reduction.