The Bell Atlantic / Verizon Price and Demand Rate Detail Dataset (BARD) contains public data on prices and demand for interstate rate elements in the historical Bell Atlantic service area for filing years 1992 to 2009, excluding 1993. Verizon is the large U.S. local telephone company that currently includes the historic Bell Atlantic service area. The source data are interstate access price-cap tariff filings made publicly at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The BARD compiles and organizes all records listed in the rate detail files that are part of Verizon / Bell Atlantic annual access filing. The dataset is a tab-delimited text file with the field names as the first record. The most current version of the BARD is "ba rd v1.txt"
This dataset is intended to foster better understanding of communications industry developments, keener appreciation for the realities of economic regulation, and more informed public policy deliberation. This dataset is neither an official nor authoritative compilation. Data in the BARD should be verified and validated as appropriate for your particular use. The official FCC online public record of tariff filings is the FCC's Electronic Tariff Filing System (ETFS). Annual access filings for 2003 to 2009 are currently available online. One way to find annual access filings is to search by company name for June 10 to June 20 for the filing year of interest. Bell Atlantic tariff documents after 2000 are under the company name Verizon. The files for 2003 to 2009 in the source data compilation are named by their file description on ETFS.
The historical Bell Atlantic service area consists of customer premises in the states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey (part), Pennsylvania (part), Virginia (part), Washington, DC, and West Virginia. Bell Atlantic acquired Nynex on August 14, 1997, and became the new Bell Atlantic. This entity acquired GTE on July 30, 2000. The new entity adopted the name Verizon. Hence Verizon is the name of the company incorporating the historical Bell Atlantic service area. In May, 2009, Verizon announced its intention to sell its local landlines in West Virginia.
The source data files and related FCC proceedings make for more informed use of the BARD. The source data files are more authoritative than the BARD. They should be used to interpret, verify, and validate BARD data as appropriate for particular uses. Because source data for 1990, 1991, and 1993 have been found only in paper copies, those years are not included in the BARD. After 2000, FCC forbearance actions removed some services from price caps. The fundamental order was the FCC’s Fifth Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Pricing Flexibility and Other Access Charge Reforms (August 27, 1999). See also subsequent related FCC orders, e.g. order on petition for waiver of pricing flexibility rules (Oct. 14, 2005).
The BARD price-cap basket sums have been validated against the sums reported in Verizon / Bell Atlantic annual access filing Tariff Review Plans (TRPs), where available. As a result of the mergers that produced Verizon, Bell Atlantic TRPs are not available for filing years 1999 and years subsequent to 2004. For years subsequent to 2004, summed rate detail records have been validated against basket total lines included within the rate detail file. Agreement is very good. The only difference of more than one-tenth of a percent is for the 2001 common-line basket. That difference arises from USAC receipts being missing in the 2001 rate-detail common-line listing. See the review file “ba rd review.xls” for details.
The reported revenue totals have been validated against revenue calculated by demand times rate. No significant discrepancies exist.
Like other telephone companies’ filings, the BARD includes some negative revenue elements and some aggregate revenue elements. These elements are listed and totaled by year in the review file.
Note that in summing records from the BARD, total lines should be excluded. The individual, bottom-level rate-elements are coded with line-type=“e”.
The BARD includes an added area code. It typically codes states and is mainly relevant to common-line basket elements. The rate-change indicator field in some some source files has been eliminated. It merely coded a difference between crate and prate.
Coding of term, zone, bandwidth, service type, and other descriptions are available for records from 1990 to 2000 in the Bell Atlantic Bandwidth Price and Demand Dataset. In addition, a table of Centrex elements from 1992-2009, with coding for area, rate-element type, and system line size, is also available.
The rate-detail source files used to the construct the BARD are available in the rate detail archive. An intermediate compilation of these source files, arranged with one worksheet for each year, is available in “ba rd trans v1.xls” Bell Atlantic TRPs (1992-2004, excluding 1999) are available in the TRP archive.
BARD Technical Specifications
Field specifications
|
Field name |
Source |
Description |
|
year |
a |
filing year; see date table for dates of rates |
|
ln |
a |
record sequence number (includes non-integers) |
|
date |
a |
indicates the source-file filing date |
|
basket |
a |
price-cap basket name |
|
line-type |
a |
“t” indicates a total line, to be excluded from lower-level sums |
|
tariff-line |
s |
textual tariff line relevant to record |
|
lcode |
s |
line number included in source files |
|
lname |
s |
service description; in some cases contains header line text |
|
usoc |
s |
Universal Service Order Codes, also known as Uniform Service Order Codes |
|
area |
a |
area for which rate element applies (state abbreviations) |
|
demand |
s |
previous year's demand (base period demand); for elements charged monthly, it's the sum of charged elements across months |
|
crate |
s |
current price for rate element, existing about June 15 of year of filing |
|
prate |
s |
proposed price for rate element, proposed to go into effect about July 1 of year of filing |
|
lrate |
s |
rates at last PCI (price-cap index) change; see date table |
|
crev |
s |
current price times previous year's demand (crate * demand) |
|
prev |
s |
proposed price times previous year's demand (prate * demand) |
|
lrev |
s |
rate at last PCI change times previous year's demand (lrate * demand) |
Note: The source column above indicates whether the field is directly from the source data (“s”) or an added classification of the source data (“a”).
The Bell-Atlantic source files for 2002-2009 gives dates for crate, prate, and lrate. See table below. These apparently are the dates at which the associated rate set went into effect.
|
|
|
Trunking |
|
|
special access |
|
|
|
lrate |
crate |
prate |
lrate |
crate |
prate |
|
2001 |
|
6/14/2001 |
7/1/2001 |
|
6/14/2001 |
7/1/2001 |
|
2002 |
|
5/4/2002 |
7/2/2002 |
|
5/4/2002 |
7/2/2002 |
|
2003 |
7/2/2002 |
2/15/2003 |
7/1/2003 |
7/2/2002 |
2/15/2003 |
7/1/2003 |
|
2004 |
7/1/2003 |
8/12/2003 |
7/1/2004 |
10/1/2003 |
10/1/2003 |
7/1/2004 |
|
2005 |
7/1/2004 |
7/24/2004 |
7/1/2005 |
7/1/2004 |
12/31/2004 |
7/1/2005 |
|
2006 |
12/23/2005 |
12/23/2005 |
7/1/2006 |
12/23/2005 |
6/1/2006 |
7/1/2006 |
|
2007 |
9/1/2006 |
2/7/2007 |
6/30/2007 |
9/30/2006 |
2/7/2007 |
6/30/2007 |
|
2008 |
6/30/2007 |
6/30/2007 |
7/1/2008 |
4/1/2008 |
4/1/2008 |
7/1/2008 |
|
2009 |
10/15/2008 |
10/15/2008 |
7/1/2009 |
10/1/2008 |
12/22/2008 |
7/1/2009 |
For some additional, minor technical notes concerning the construction of the BARD from the sources, see “ba rd notes.txt”