The American Cable Association has told the FCC that if it
does not give its smaller and mid-sized cable operator members some relief from
data collection requirements for the FCC's review of the special access market,
it is in danger of violating the law.
In a 3-2 party line vote in August 2012, the FCC suspended
its current benchmarks for deregulating the rates of special-access (business)
broadband services while it better determines where there is competition for
that service viaa data-collection initiative to inform the review of special access regs.
Larger cable operators also complained at the time it would
be an extreme burden, but ACA says the burden would fall disproportionately on
its smaller members.
"The cost of gathering, collating, and
formatting the information will be excessive for small cable operators," said
ACA president Matt Polka. "Because the request imposes such large burdens on
small cable operators, ACA submits they are not compliant with the Paperwork
Reduction Act's directive to minimize the paperwork burden, especially for
smaller entities, and needs to be extensively revised before the mandatory data
request should be issued."
