STATEMENT OF 
COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI
Re: Modernizing the FCC Form 477 Data Program, WC Docket No. 11-10.
It’s fair to say that the FCC collects a lot of data and issues a lot of reports.  According to the 
White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, for example, the Commission collects 
information in 424 distinct ways from members of the public.
1
  We release a host of reports on different 
aspects of the communications marketplace, some each year as mandated by Congress
2
and others more 
intermittently.
3
Today we start consolidating some of the disparate collections that underlie those reports in a way 
that—we hope—reduces the burden on telephone and broadband service providers while at the same time 
providing the information that Congress and the Commission need to make well-informed policy 
decisions.  I am pleased that my colleagues accepted several of my suggestions to streamline this 
collection, such as by making clear that multi-state providers need only file once to report their data,
rather than filing a separate form for each state.  We also direct the Bureaus to develop software to reduce 
the cost of filing, for those providers that volunteer to use it.  More generally, I appreciate Chairwoman 
Clyburn for crafting a consensus, leaving contentious issues like the collection of broadband pricing 
information for another day.
That takes care of input.  What about output, namely, the reports we release?  We’ll rely on the 
data we collect here for five separate reports: the Broadband Deployment Report, the Internet Access 
Services Report, the Local Telephone Competition Report, the Wireless Competition Report, and the 
International Broadband Data Report. I’d like to consolidate all these reports, but our congressional 
reporting requirements stem from a halcyon time when each silo of the communications industry was an 
easily defined marketplace unto itself.  That’s why I support efforts in Congress to pass the Federal 
Communications Commission Consolidated Reporting Act.  This legislation would give the FCC the 
freedom to extend the reforms we adopt today, eliminating outdated obligations and refining our work in 
a way that makes sense for us, for Congress, and for consumers.
Finally, this order has been two years in the making, and I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Kirk 
Burgee, Ellen Burton, Jean Ann Collins, Bill Dever, Lisa Gelb, Chelsea Fallon, Nese Guendelsberger, 
Diane Griffin Holland, Michael Janson, Melissa Kirkel, Doug Klein, Travis Litman, Ken Lynch, Marcus 
Maher, Ruth Milkman, Steve Rosenberg, Paroma Sanyal, Jim Schlichting, Mitali Shah, Carol Simpson, 
Susan Singer, Jamie Susskind, Julie Veach, and Rodger Woock for their contributions.  And I believe 
now is an appropriate time to recognize the analysts, the economists, the number crunchers, and the data 
                                                     
1
See Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Inventory of Currently Approved Information Collections for 
the Federal Communications Commission, www.reginfo.gov (last visited June 26, 2013).
2
FCC Report to Congress as Required by the ORBIT Act, Fourteenth Report, FCC 13-80 (June 7, 2013) (Statement 
of Commissioner Pai) (noting that the Open-Market Reorganization for the Betterment of International 
Telecommunications Act “requires the Commission to annually update Congress on the agency’s progress in 
implementing the Act, even though that statute’s goal . . . has long since been achieved”), available at
http://go.usa.gov/bM2w.
3
GAO, Report to the Acting Chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission on the Video Marketplace: 
Competition Is Evolving, and Government Reporting Should Be Reevaluated, GAO-13-576 (June 2013) (noting that 
the Commission has failed to publish required reports on the cable industry eight times in the last decade, and 
recommending that the Commission consider whether it would make sense to issue such reports less frequently and 
transmit its analysis to Congress), available at http://go.usa.gov/bM4m.
wizards of the Industry Analysis and Technology Division. You turn the vast information we collect into 
products useful for policymakers, an often unsung task but one worthy of great thanks.