Through the years, our law firm and its affiliated consulting arm, The Commpliance Group, have represented hundreds of telecommunications and VoIP service providers with an assortment of legal and regulatory compliance matters on a nationwide basis.
The purpose of the series of Educational Primers and articles (recently published on LinkedIn and linked below) is to share our firm’s collective experience representing clients with respect to a diverse range of common issues and to offer you a foundation of knowledge we hope will guide your regulatory compliance efforts.
We hope you find the following information both useful and informative.
How to Avoid Having a Simple E-mail from USAC Spiral into an Audit Nightmare
Our firm’s experience representing clients BEFORE, DURING and AFTER USAC audits has shed a tremendous amount of light onto what was, heretofore, a rather opaque, fluid, and uncertain process. Like USF filing itself, USAC’s audit process and procedures can easily trip-up providers who do not deal with USAC on a regular basis, and one seemingly innocuous tool USAC uses presents a special concern for our clients and any USF contributor. In our experience, USAC’s use of informal requests for information, often in the form of an email, can be the first step toward a formal audit or desk review of a provider by USAC.
Primer on FCC Regulations Governing Transfers of Control and Asset Transfers Involving Telecom Services
Our law firm has represented numerous clients by assisting them in the navigation of both the FCC, and State Transfer of Control processes. All too often, we are alerted to such transactions only AFTER they have been consummated. With few exceptions, any time companies close a transaction involving regulated telecommunications assets without first obtaining FCC authorization, we must not only take corrective measures necessary to procure authorization, we must then contend with the resulting FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation.
To Regulate or Not, That is the Question: Regulatory Classification of Mobile Calling Apps
Given the increasing prevalence of mobile calling apps over the last several years, there has been great confusion, uncertainty, and speculation as to how the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or “the Commission”) views such services for regulatory purposes. To date, the Commission has yet to categorically and explicitly define the regulatory classification of mobile calling apps. However, this does not mean mobile calling apps are not on the FCC’s radar.
