The Pacific Bell Price and Demand Dataset (PBPD) contains public data on prices and demand for interstate rate elements in the historical Pacific Bell service area from 1994 to 2009. The source data are interstate access price-cap tariff filings made publicly at the FCC. The PBPD compiles and organizes all records listed in the available rate detail files that are part of Pacific Bell’s annual access filings. The dataset is a tab-delimited text file with the field names as the first record. It is named "pb rd 1994-2009 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 is dataset neither an official nor authoritative compilation. The official FCC 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. The files for 2003 to 2009 in the source data compilation are named by their file description on ETFS.
The historical Pacific Bell service area consists of customer premises in California. Pacific Bell has been a local telephone exchange operating company within the holding company Pacific Telesis Group. Pacific Telesis also includes Nevada Bell, a local telephone exchange operating company whose service area is Nevada. SBC Communications, Inc., which subsequently became the new AT&T, acquired Pacific Telesis Group on April 1, 1997.
Data reported in Pacific Bell’s rate detail filings have varied across years. Pacific Bell reported neither demand (units sold) nor revenue in 1996. Prior to 1998, Pacific Bell did not report revenue. Revenue figures for these years (other than 1996) have been calculated from the reported demands, current rates, and proposed rates. The rate detail filings for 1994 and 1995 include both year-end rates and rates at the last price cap index (PCI) update. Filings for other years do not include these rates.
The PBPD includes two filings for each of the years 1998, 2000, and 2004. To aid comparisons over time, the year-representative filing (the filing best representing the annual access filing) is identified with the code y in the field yrf.
The PBPD price-cap basket sums have been validated against the sums reported in Pacific Bell’s annual access filing Tariff Review Plans (TRPs). The validation is with respect to the year-representative filing (yrf=y). Discrepancies between the rate detail and the TRPs are minor. The TRP for 1997 does not include interexchange basket revenue, which was negligible (about $145,000). The 2000 rate detail includes an extra $19 million in the special access basket and $27 million less in the trunking basket. A major access reform (the CALLS plan) was implemented in 2000. Revisions associated with that implementation may account for these discrepancies. For the revenue totals, see the revenue comparison sheet (also available in an Excel workbook).
Some inconsistencies exist in the source files for rate element revenues. Most of these inconsistencies are in 2009. They seem to arise from demand and rates being reported with less precision than was used for calculating the reported revenue. Most of the inconsistencies amount to one-half of the reported rate. That suggests that demand was charged in half-unit values, but reported demand was rounded down to the nearest unit. The inconsistency in 2004 for shared office ports is unusual. In the source file, the formatted rates for this element appear to be zero, the underlying data has obscured precision. Why the revenue figures for this rate element are zero isn’t clear. The resulting revenue inconsistencies is about $12 million. In other years, this rate element is correctly reported. For details, see the rate discrepancies and large rounding error sheets (also in Excel workbook).
Pacific Bell’s rate detail files include considerable revenue associated with rate elements that do not have meaningful demand (units sold) or rates. See undetailed revenue spreadsheets (also available as an Excel workbook). These elements have important effects on the functioning of price caps.
Note that in summing records from the PBPD, total lines should be excluded. The individual, bottom-level rate-elements are coded with line-type=“e”.
For data-specific notes (mostly minor) on the Pacific Bell rate detail filings, see pb notes.txt
The rate-detail source files used to the construct the PBPD are available in the rate detail archive. Pacific Bell’s TRPs are available in the TRP archive.
PBPD Technical Specification
Dataset Fields
|
Field name |
Source |
Description |
|
year |
a |
filing year; see date table for dates of rates |
|
yrf |
a |
reference filing for year (“y”) or other (“n”); indicates filing best representative of annual access filing |
|
date |
a |
filing date; some years include multiple filings distinguished by date |
|
ln |
a |
record sequence number, based on sequence in the source file |
|
basket |
a |
price-cap basket name |
|
tariff-section |
s |
tariff section – populated only for 1994 and 1997 filings |
|
line-type |
a |
“e” – rate element; “t” – total line |
|
lcode |
s |
line codes from the source (sparse, includes some descriptive text) |
|
lname |
s |
service description; in some cases contains header line text |
|
usoc |
s |
Universal Service Order Codes, also known as Uniform Service Order Codes – populated only for 1994 and 1997 filings |
|
state |
s |
state for which rate element is applicable; null if whole region |
|
zone |
s |
zone for which rate element is applicable; null if whole region |
|
demand |
s |
previous year's demand (base period demand); for elements charged monthly, it's the sum of charged elements across months |
|
yerate |
s |
price (rate) at year-end (populated only for 1994 and 1995 filings) |
|
lrate |
s |
price at last price-cap index (PCI) update (populated only for 1994 and 1995 filings) |
|
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 |
|
crev |
s |
current price times previous year's demand (crate * demand) |
|
prev |
s |
proposed price time previous year's demand (prate * demand) |
|
crev-f |
a |
combines calculated crev for 1994, 1995, 1997 with reported crev for 1998-2009 |
|
prev-f |
a |
combines calculated prev for 1994, 1995, 1997 with reported prev for 1998-2009 |
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”).