Federal Communications Commission FCC 13-23
STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI
Re: United States Telecom Association Petition for Forbearance under 47 U.S.C. § 160(c) from 
Enforcement of Certain Legacy Telecommunications Regulations, WC Docket No. 12-61.
When Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, one of the most important tools it 
gave the FCC was forbearance authority.  This authority allows the Commission to set aside outdated 
laws and regulations that once may have made sense but have come to stymie the pro-competitive, 
deregulatory objectives of the Act.
1
Today we exercise this authority to grant relief from two-and-a-half of the seventeen sets of rules 
cited in US Telecom’s petition for forbearance, which was filed a little more than one year ago.  No one 
defended these rules or opposed forbearance from them.  But they are not particularly onerous either.  For 
instance, the fruit doesn’t hang much lower than the seventy-seven year old requirement (first imposed by 
the FCC’s Telegraph Division) involving telegraph carriers’ delayed or undelivered messages and money 
orders, especially considering that FCC staff repeatedly has recommended its deletion—again, without 
any opposition—since the Clinton Administration.
2
I’m pleased we’re picking it, but other rules identified in the petition are ripe as well.  For some 
of these rules, the petition for forbearance met with scant if any resistance.  For others, the Commission 
already has concluded that forbearance is appropriate for the largest companies but has not yet done so 
with respect to smaller businesses.  I hope we expeditiously consider the fourteen-and-a-half sets of rules 
that remain unaddressed by today’s order.  We should act soon to revise these and other regulations to fit 
the times.
                                                     
1
With this power came a responsibility:  The FCC must act on a petition for forbearance within one year of its filing 
unless it “finds that an extension is necessary” to meet the requirements of the statute.  47 U.S.C. § 160(c).  
Unfortunately, the Commission has repeatedly allowed the extension exception to swallow the one-year rule.  Given 
the senescence of many of these rules, the private sector burdens of compliance, and the general need for the agency 
to act with dispatch, I believe we should aim to complete (not commence) our analysis of forbearance petitions by 
the one-year deadline.
2
See Order, para. 9 & note 31.