FCC chief backs AT&T bid to waive cost data

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the Federal Communications Commission said on Thursday he supports a bid by AT&T Inc T.N to waive rules requiring the company to provide information on its costs to regulators.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters he had proposed approving a petition sought by AT&T that would waive the rules, which he called “decades-old regulations that don’t make as much sense anymore.”

Martin said AT&T has estimated it costs $10 million a year for the company to adhere to the rule. AT&T says the regulations reflect a time when the company was a monopoly and the rates it charged were based on costs, but it now operates in a competitive marketplace.

“I think it’s important for us to try to respond to deregulatory efforts that would save the companies a significant amount of revenue, and particularly for rules and regulations that are no longer required...,” Martin said.

Martin and the agency’s other four commissioners face a deadline on Thursday to act on AT&T’s request. Martin said not all the other commissioners had voted yet.

Under the rules, AT&T said, the company must maintain a “vast system” to break down and report costs ranging from office space, to employees, to company transactions, including a system of codes and a manual more than 100 pages long.

But the petition has been opposed by some rivals such as Sprint Nextel Corp S.N, who say the information is needed to make sure that AT&T is charging them fairly when it carries their traffic over its network.

Martin also said the FCC would vote at its next meeting, on May 14, to seek public comment on how to proceed with a stalled effort to use publicly auctioned airwaves to create a wireless network that could be shared with emergency workers.

Bidders in an FCC auction earlier this year were unwilling to meet the $1.3 billion minimum price for the airwaves set aside for the shared network. The FCC is studying plans to re-auction the D-block.