NCTA Has Major Problems With Special Access

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association has taken aim at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler's support for a proposal by Verizon and INCOMPAS that the FCC potentially regulate cable special access (business broadband) rates. In meetings with FCC officials, NCTA executives said they had significant concern with "the possibility that the rates charged by cable operators and other facilities-based competitors in the market for business data services could be subject to "ex ante rate regulation."

Rather than considering the incumbent telecommunication companies (LECs) as the de facto dominant carriers and regulating them, the proposal, which Chairman Wheeler has echoed in his own special access reforms proposed recently, would potentially regulate ILECs, or their telecommunication company competitors (CLECS), or cable operators in the interests of competition. Chairman Wheeler has called that a tech-neutral approach. NCTA calls it off base. "[A]ny finding that competitive entry has been insufficient to affect the prices offered to consumers (e.g., because competitors do not offer the same range of services or their networks have limited geographic reach) necessarily means that the incumbent LEC remains dominant and should be regulated accordingly." Verizon, INCOMPAS, and Chairman Wheeler all propose moving away from a dominant/nondominant model of determining where regulations are appropriate.