The US Supreme Court has rapped the Federal Communications Commission for giving long-distance competitors too much leeway in offering tariffs and services not detailed in filings with the Commission: the policy was designed to foster more competition for AT&T Corp, which still holds 60% of the US market; AT&T had successfully challenged the policy in the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia; federal law allows the Commission to modify any requirement of the law but the Supreme Court decided that an elimination of the crucial provision of the statute for 40% of a major sector of the industry is much too extensive to be considered a ‘modification’; the court sympathises with the smaller companies over the cost of making filings, but says the Commission has effectively introduced a whole new regime of regulation – which may well be a better regime but is not the one that Congress established the jurists say.
