Federal Communications Commission An Examination of Regulatory Fees

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must by law assess annual regulatory fees on telecommunications entities to recover its entire appropriation, about $336 million in fiscal year 2011. The entities from which the FCC collects fees fall into one of five main industry sectors (broadcast, cable, wireline, wireless, and international) and are assigned to one of 86 fee categories, such as paging services. Recently, the FCC stated that it was planning to consider reforms to its regulatory fees process. This book examines the FCC's process for assessing regulatory fees among industry sectors; FCC's regulatory fee collections over the past ten years; and alternative approaches to assessing regulatory fees.