The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC or Commission) Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) has extended comment deadlines in its special access rulemaking proceeding. On December 11, 2012, the Commission adopted an order requiring providers and purchasers of special access and certain entities providing “best efforts” service to submit data and information for a comprehensive evaluation of the special access market. The Commission sought comment on possible changes to its rules for the special access services provided by incumbent local exchange carriers in price cap areas. The final deadline for responding to the data collection was February 27, 2015, but the Bureau has not yet made the data available. In order to provide sufficient time for the public to access and review this information before filing comments and replies under the current deadlines – April 6, 2015 and May 18, 2015 respectively – the Bureau has decided that comments will now be due by July 1, 2015 and replies by July 22, 2015.
