Earlier this month, the FCC issued a decision that exempted major telecom carriers such as Verizon and Qwest from collecting data and reporting on criteria such as service quality, customer satisfaction, infrastructure status and operating data.

While this may seem like an obscure issue, many consumer groups have argued that it goes straight to the heart of how many consumers and businesses make informed and intelligent decisions about selecting telecom service providers. In this Q&A with ourselves we'll give you an overview of why the FCC ruled as it did, how it will change carriers' reporting requirements and the different arguments both in favor and against changing these requirements.

What exactly is the FCC exempting the carriers from?

In 1990, the FCC began requiring major telecom carriers to file Automated Reporting Management Information System (ARMIS) reports on service quality and customer satisfaction information, as well as on infrastructure and reporting data. The goal of these reports was to ensure that carriers were not lowering their network qualities to make short-term profits under the FCC's new price cap regulation system, and also to make sure that carriers were spending sufficient money on infrastructure development. Thus, large telcos had to submit annual data to the FCC on criteria such as customer complaint volume and money dedicated to network improvement.

But as the FCC notes, the advent of technologies such as cellular and VoIP has made the scope of these reports outdated. With more VoIP providers getting involved in offering voice services, telecom companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Qwest have long argued that they alone shouldn't be required to provide customer satisfaction and quality data to the FCC, as it puts a drain on their financial resources and puts them at a competitive disadvantage with other voice providers. The FCC last week showed it was sympathetic to this argument and exempted Verizon and Qwest from reporting on these criteria. Earlier in the year, the FCC had issued a similar ruling exempting AT&T from reporting them.

Does this mean that carriers will never again have to publicly report on their service quality?

Not exactly. In the first place, the FCC has mandated that the carriers still have to provide this information to the commission for the next two years. Additionally, many commissioners think the FCC should take this opportunity to overhaul the government's reporting requirements for all telecom providers, not merely the traditional big phone companies. As FCC chairman Kevin Martin put it, "even if some information is important to disclose publicly to help inform customers and ensure an open market, it needs to be provided by all the competitors."

But wouldn't it have made more sense to simply amend the reporting rules to include all relevant Internet and voice providers rather than just exempt the telcos and then revisit the matter later?

Well, yes.

But the way the rules are currently set up, the FCC had to issue some kind of ruling on the telcos' forbearance requests by a certain date or the requests would have been "deemed granted." In other words, if the commission had made no definitive judgment by the end of last week, the telcos would have gotten precisely what they wanted without preconditions.

Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein called eliminating the requirements before creating new ones "putting the horse before the cart," but also said that it's "far better than immediate and precipitous elimination of all the rules." Commissioner Michael Copps made a similar statement as Adelstein and said the new compromise gave the commission an opportunity to "do what it should have done a long time ago, which is to revise and update its reporting requirements."

However, having an opportunity to rewrite reporting regulations is no guarantee that anything will actually happen. After all, the FCC has a mere two-year window to keep the big telcos reporting their customer satisfaction and service quality data, and Commissioner Deborah Tate has already signaled that she might oppose any reinstatement