Assessment and Collection of Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2011

In this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking [1], we propose to collect $335,794,000 in regulatory fees for Fiscal Year (“FY”) 2011, pursuant to Section 9 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the “Act”). Section 9 regulatory fees are mandated by Congress and are collected to recover the regulatory costs associated with the Commission’s enforcement, policy and rulemaking, user information, and international activities. The annual regulatory fee amount to be collected is established each year in the Commission’s Annual Appropriations Act which is adopted by Congress and signed by the President and which funds the Commission. In this annual regulatory fee proceeding, we retain many of the established methods, policies, and procedures for collecting Section 9 regulatory fees adopted by the Commission in prior years. Consistent with our established practice, we intend to collect these regulatory fees during a September 2011 filing window in order to collect the required amount by the end of our fiscal year.

In our FY 2011 regulatory fee assessment, we will use the same Section 9 regulatory fee assessment methodology adopted in FY 2010 and in prior years. Each fiscal year, the Commission proportionally allocates the total amount that must be collected via Section 9 regulatory fees. The results of our FY 2011 regulatory fee assessment methodology (including a comparison to the prior year’s results) are contained in Appendix A. To collect the $335,794,000 required by Congress, we adjusted the FY 2010 amount upward by 4.7 percent and allocated this amount across the various fee categories. Consistent with past practice, we then divided the FY 2011 amount by the number of estimated payment units in each fee category to determine the unit fee. As in prior years, for cases involving small fees, e.g., licenses that are renewed over a multiyear term, we divided the resulting unit fee by the term of the license and then rounded these unit fees consistent with the requirements of Section 9(b)(2) of the Act.

Notice of Proposed Rulemaking [1]

Extension of Comment and Reply Comment Period For FY 2011 Regulatory Fee NPRM [2]