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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 181 / Wednesday, September 22, 2021 / Rules and Regulations expenses are separately funded and not part of the Commissions appropriation supported by regulatory fees. The Commission recovers the costs of developing and implementing its section 309j spectrum auctions program as an offsetting collection against auction proceeds and subject to an annual cap.
9. Office of Engineering and Technology Activities. Commenters contend that the Commission should require users of unlicensed spectrum and/or equipment manufacturers to pay regulatory fees to support the Commissions Office of Engineering and Technologys OETs work on the management of spectrum for unlicensed use and authorization of equipment. We decline the commenters request to revisit our fundamental regulatory fees methodology, and their proposal to create one or more new regulatory fee payor categories consisting of unlicensed spectrum users and/or equipment manufacturers, which under our current methodology would effectively transform OET into a core bureau and transform OET FTEs into direct FTEs. The Commission has not treated OET as a core bureau and has considered its FTEs work to be indirect activities for which all payors of regulatory fees have been responsible.
10. Exempt Noncommercial Stations.
A broadcast commenter contends that broadcasters should not be responsible for the regulatory fees of exempt noncommercial stations. The RAY
BAUMS Act specifically exempted noncommercial radio and television stations from regulatory fees. And because Congress has mandated collection of regulatory fees equal to the annual appropriation, the $374 million must be collected from all non-exempt regulatory fee payors. As a result, we find it is consistent with section 9 of the Act to include those costs that are attributable to all regulatees in each bureaus revenue requirement because all of the regulatees in that fee category, whether they pay regulatory fees or not, benefit from the oversight and regulation of that bureau.
B. Commercial Mobile Radio Service Regulatory Fees Calculation 11. We adopt our proposal to include non-geographic numbers in the calculation of the number of subscribers for each Commercial Mobile Radio Service CMRS provider. The inclusion non-geographic numbers does not increase the total amount collected from the CMRS industry but will reduce the per subscriber fee. In the FY 2021
NPRM, we determined that, with the inclusion of non-geographic numbers,
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there would be 504 million payment units, and the estimated regulatory fee would be 15 cents per subscriber. As we explained in the FY 2021 NPRM, nongeographic numbers are assigned numbers but not associated with any particular geographic area. They are included in Numbering Resource Utilization Forecast NRUF Report data and fall within the definition of assigned numbers. Historically, nongeographic numbers were commonly used for follow me services, which allowed a consumer to receive a call at different locations, and were not used for independent subscribers. For that reason, the Commission did not previously include these numbers in the CMRS subscriber count estimates because it would result in double counting of subscribers. More recently, however, non-geographic numbers are increasingly used for machine-tomachine calling, such as wireless alarm monitoring and car emergency services subscriptions. Therefore, counting nongeographic numbers for regulatory fee purposes is no longer duplicative of the geographic number. No commenters oppose our proposal, and we therefore adopt it.
C. Direct Broadcast Satellite Fees 12. We adopt our proposal to complete the phase-in of the DBS
regulatory fee and place all DBS, cable television, and internet Protocol television IPTV providers in the same fee category at the same per subscriber regulatory fee. Direct Broadcast Satellite DBS service is a nationally distributed subscription service that delivers video and audio programming via satellite to a small parabolic dish antenna at the subscribers location. DBS providers are multichannel video programming distributors MVPDs, as defined in section 60213 of the Act. The Media Bureau oversees the regulation of MVPDs, including the two providers of DBS in the United States: DISH Network and DIRECTV. Upon adoption of this Report and Order, the Commission will include cable, IPTV, and DBS in the same fee category. Commenters also request that the Commission use updated MVPD subscriber numbers that are closer in time to the release of the Commissions annual regulatory fee order. While we understand this concern, we are unable to administratively accommodate this request. Since DBS subscriber information is not reported to the Commission, it would be difficult for the Commission to permit DBS
providers to pay based on their most recent subscriber count in June, for example, because this subscriber count
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information would only become known to the Commission when DBS providers make their payment in late September.
Therefore, we decline to make this change on the reporting date of DBS
subscriber information.
D. Full-Service Television Broadcaster Fees 1. FY 2021 Regulatory Fees 13. We adopt the use of the population-based methodology for fullservice television broadcasters for FY
2021, as proposed. In FY 2020, the Commission completed the transition to a population-based full-power broadcast television regulatory fee, finding it to be more equitable. In the FY 2021 NPRM, we proposed adopting a factor of .8525
of one cent $.008525 per population served for FY 2021 full-power broadcast television station fees. We are, however, adopting a lower fee factor, .7793 of one cent $.007793. This lower fee factor is a result of excluding radio and television broadcasters from the $33
million portion of our appropriation that is earmarked for implementation of the Broadband DATA Act. The population data for each licensee and the population-based fee population multiplied by $.007793 for each fullpower broadcast television station, including each satellite station, is listed in Table 7. Some commenters argue that the Commissions resources in oversight and regulation do not increase or decrease depending on the population served by a broadcaster, and therefore we should not base the regulatory fee on the population served. These commenters do not, however, offer an alternative proposal that would be fair and reasonable to small and large broadcasters. As we have previously stated, the Commissions methodology need not reach scientific precision, but simply be reasonable.
2. Stations in Puerto Rico 14. We adopt the same adjustments to population count for FY 2021 for TV
broadcasters in Puerto Rico that we provided those broadcasters in FY 2020.
Previously, a group of broadcasters in Puerto Rico argued that our methodology overstates the population served by Puerto Rico stations because the mountainous terrain conditions result in the TVStudy overstating the population served. They also argued that significant and measurable drops in Puerto Ricos population resulting from an exodus caused in part by Hurricane Maria overstated that the population counts underlying the TVStudy. To address these concerns, in the FY 2020
Report and Order, the Commission
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