OMB Gets Earful On Enhanced Transparency

The Office of Management and Budget is hearing it from Internet service provides on the new enhanced transparency rules the Federal Communications Commission adopted, but has yet to implement, as part of the Open Internet order and what they argue was the FCC's lowballing of those obligations and costs. The Open Internet order was adopted over a year ago, but the enhanced transparency rules require OMB to sign off on any new paperwork burdens before they take effect per the Paperwork Reduction Act, which OMB has yet to do. In comments on that paperwork review, AT&T said the FCC's estimates of the data collection requirements failed to pass the "straight-face test." It said the FCC's analysis was slipshod and superficial and should be rejected by OMB.

For example, said AT&T, the FCC will require ISPs to measure packet loss, something they have not previously had to do, and so so in undefined "peak periods." AT&T says that would cost far more than FCC estimates and might even cost more for AT&T's compliance alone than the FCC estimated for all the transparency requirements for the entire industry. While the FCC has estimated compliance costs industrywide at $640,000, AT&T says new packet loss testing and reporting could cost it millions of dollars a year. "Finally, the FCC has provided no serious explanation of the practical benefits to consumers of measurement and disclosure of packet loss. Packet loss, which depends on, among other things, router buffer size, is unlikely to be of any value to consumers, and attempts to reduce it could actually impair service quality. And the OIO didn’t even attempt to explain the benefits of disclosing packet loss," AT&T told OMB.