The US West Price and Demand Dataset (UWPD) contains public tariff data on prices and demand for interstate rate elements in the historic US West-Qwest service area from 1992 to 2009. US West-Qwest is a large U.S. local telephone operating company. The source data are interstate access price-cap tariff filings made publicly at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The UWPD compiles and organizes all records listed in the available rate detail files that are part of US West’s and Qwest's annual access filings. The dataset is a tab-delimited text file with the field names as the first record. It is named "usw 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. 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. US West tariff documents after 2000 are under the company name Qwest. The files for 2003 to 2009 in the source data compilation are named by their file description on ETFS. Data in the UWPD should be verified and validated as appropriate for your particular use.
The historic US West service area consists of customer premises in parts of 14 Western and Mid-Western states: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. US West changed its name to Qwest on July 6, 2000. A relatively small accounting adjustment associated with the US West-Qwest-owned Malheur Home Telephone Company and El Paso County Telephone Company took place in 2004.
The rate detail filing for 2002 has not been located and hence is not included in the UWPD. In 2000 and 2001, US West filed additional TRPs and rate detail under the COSA code CSTR. These rate detail filings are included as additional (yrf=n) filings in the UWPD. The CSTR filings might be associated with US West selling off some lines.
The UWPD price-cap basket revenue sums have been validated against the sums reported in US West’s annual access filing Tariff Review Plans (TRPs). Among other issues, the rate detail filings lack, in the common-line basket, lifeline revenue for 1994-1995, USAC receipts for 2001-2009, and special-access surcharge revenue for 1994-2005. The marketing basket, which should appear for 1998-1999, is missing. Other differences are more difficult to interpret. Differences are documented in the US West review workbook (Excel file).
Like other incumbent local exchange companies, Qwest has reported large aggregate credit elements in its special-access basket in recent years. In its 2009 filing, two aggregate credit elements amounted to 14.9% of total special-access basket revenue before applying the credits. For details see the aggregate credit worksheet in the review workbook (Excel file).
Note that in summing records from the UWPD, total lines should be excluded. The individual, bottom-level rate-elements are coded with line-type=“e”. In one instance, state-level detail has been provided for one element line for only crev. Those records have been coded with line-type=i.
Special access and trunking elements include purchase commitment term and zone descriptions. These descriptions appear in header lines and in the lcode specification. Thus the records must be examined closely, in source order (ln sort), to determine term and zone for a specific element.
Coding of term, zone, bandwidth, service type, and other descriptions are available for special access and trunking records from 1990 to 2000 in the US West Bandwidth Dataset. In addition, coded common-line-basket elements from 1992-2009 are available as an additional dataset, usw cl rd.txt. US West-Qwest switched access lines by state from the FCC's ARMIS are also available as a dataset in convenient form, usw armis lines.txt. Here's some analysis of US West-Qwest switched access lines.
The rate-detail source files used to the construct the UWPD are available in the rate detail archive. US West’s TRPs are available in the TRP archive.
UWPD Technical Specification
Dataset Fields
|
Field name |
Source |
Description |
|
year |
a |
filing year; see date table for dates of rates |
|
date |
a |
filing date; some years include multiple filings distinguished by date |
|
version |
a |
filing version; differentiates filings made on the same date |
|
yrf |
a |
year-reference filing (yrf=y) indicates best filing for trend analysis |
|
ln |
a |
record sequence number, based on sequence in the source file |
|
basket |
a |
price-cap basket name |
|
line-type |
a |
“e” – rate element; “t” – total line; “i” – inconsistently itemized sub-element |
|
lcode |
s |
line code included in the source |
|
lname2 |
s |
additional description field included for some years |
|
lname |
s |
service description; in some cases contains header line text |
|
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 |
|
crev |
s |
current price times previous year's demand (crate * demand) |
|
prev |
s |
proposed price times previous year's demand (prate * 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”). Added classifications follow directly from text in element description (lname).
For some additional, minor technical notes and version changes, see the file “usw rd notes.txt”.