Commissioner Pai: FCC Should Not Have Dunned AT&T

Commissioner Ajit Pai of the Federal Communications Commission says the FCC should not have issued a notice of apparent liability and proposed fine against AT&T because it waited too long to take that enforcement action. The FCC has proposed fining the company $106,425 and make it repay $63,760 to the Universal Service Fund for allegedly overcharging two Florida schools for phone service under the FCC's E-rate program. Commissioner Pai was not taking issue with the decision, only when the FCC issued it and the legal reasoning behind it.

"We have issued this Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL) too late," he wrote in a published dissent. "The Communications Act imposes a one-year statute of limitations. Like most other statutes of limitations, it runs from when a violation is complete —in this case, when AT&T 'charge[d]' Dixie County and Orange County 'a price above the lowest corresponding price.' According to our records, AT&T last charged Dixie County for the relevant services on July 1, 2014, and Orange County for the relevant services on June 1, 2015. And the last relevant form AT&T filed in conjunction with these charges was October 27, 2014." "So even in the best-case scenario, the statute of limitations ran out 56 days ago, on June 1, 2016," he said.