In May 2016, the FCC moved forward with its decade-overdue reform of the $45 Billion per year dedicated business data services (“BDS”) market. BDS providers, including major incumbent telecommunications companies and now even cable television companies offering dedicated BDS services on the one hand, and major BDS customers, including wireless carriers, competitive wireline carriers, and enterprise business customers on the other, will all be substantially impacted by the FCC’s Tariff Investigation Order (“Order”) and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”).

The Commission found unjust and unreasonable 18 existing BDS tariff plans offered by AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink and Frontier, including “all or nothing” provisions, and certain shortfall and early termination charge provisions of volume/term BDS pricing plans that lock up customers and prevent them from transitioning services from traditional incumbent LEC TDM services to more scalable and cost-effective Ethernet and other packet-based BDS Services which represent the technological future of BDS services.