STATEMENT OF
CHAIRMAN AJIT PAI
Re: Section 43.62 Reporting Requirements for U.S. Providers of International Services, IB Docket 
No. 17-55; 2016 Biennial Review of Telecommunications Regulations, IB Docket No. 16-131.
Section 11 of the Communications Act requires the FCC to review every telecommunications
regulation on the books every two years and to “determine whether [it] is no longer necessary in the 
public interest as the result of meaningful economic competition between providers of such service.”  For 
many years, the FCC treated this “biennial review” obligation like a check-the-box assignment.  Agency 
staff spent many hours compiling outdated regulations that were ripe for repeal, and the FCC did . . . 
nothing.  I know this because I used to be one of those staffers.
But times are changing.  Today, the Commission takes steps to eliminate and streamline two 
categories of outdated reporting requirements.  In response to matters teed up during the 2016 biennial 
review process, we propose today to eliminate the annual Traffic and Revenue Report and streamline the 
Circuit Capacity Report, each of which places filing burdens on U.S. providers of international services.  
And we do this because competition has obviated the original need for these reports, and the cost of these 
ongoing data collections exceed the benefits to the Commission and companies alike.
For instance, over 1,800 entities had to file information for the 2016 international Traffic and 
Revenue Report.  And countless employees spent thousands of hours to prepare, submit, and analyze this 
data. Yet the Commission doesn’t need this information in order to discharge its duties.  That’s because 
the marketplace for international communications services is by all accounts competitive.  Indeed, that’s 
why the FCC ended its International Settlements Policy in 2012.  It unanimously concluded, based in part 
on a 2010 traffic report, that the “market has seen significant competitive growth,” making the policy not 
only superfluous but counterproductive.
And I believe this is now true of the Report itself.  It is our hope that the resources currently 
devoted to complying with these unnecessary reporting requirements will be applied to more productive 
use—namely, connecting American consumers now and in the future.  This is another step toward 
modernizing our rules and enabling the private sector to deploy infrastructure rather than teams of 
lawyers and accountants.  I hope these proposals will be adopted in the near future.
This doesn’t end our work in this vineyard, though.  In this Notice, we also seek comment on 
ways to streamline and improve the reporting requirements related to the Circuit Capacity Reports.  For 
example, we seek input in the Notice on the costs of preparing and submitting these reports; whether we 
should consider changing the information we collect; and whether we can get any necessary data from 
publicly available commercial sources.  Here too we should ensure that reporting requirements are 
functions of actual need, not agency inertia, and that the benefits of this information collection outweigh 
the costs.
I’d like to thank the staff of the International Bureau for its hard work on this item, particularly 
Denise Coca, Kate Collins, Kim Cook, Jerry Duvall, Francis Gutierrez, Gabrielle Kim, David Krech, 
Heidi Kroll, Arthur Lechtman, Daniel Shiman, Walt Strack, Tom Sullivan, Troy Tanner, Lindsay Tello, 
and Irene Wu.