I. Introduction.
The Commission should deny American Electric Power Service Corporation, Duke Energy Corporation, Southern Company, and Xcel Energy Services, Inc.’s (“Petitioners”) Petition for Declaratory Ruling (“Petition”)1 for the following reasons:
- Applying the Telecom Rate to pole attachments used by cable operators to provide VoIP telephony services will raise costs to consumers and impede broadband deployment.
- There is no valid statutory or policy basis for applying the Telecom Rate to pole attachments used for providing VoIP telephony services.
- The Commission should seek to provide regulatory parity among cable operators and competitive telephone service providers.
- Electric consumers are not subsidizing cable companies.
For these reasons, the Commission must deny the Petition.