Principal Stephen E. Siwek who was assisted by Senior Economist Gale Mosteller submitted testimony for directory publishers in two complaints about overcharges for telephone subscriber listings, the first complaints of this type filed under the FCC’s section 208 complaint process. The telephone companies attempted to defend their rates by submitting cost studies that did not adhere to the FCC’s SLI order, 14 FCC Rcd. 15550 (1999), because they failed to justify their rates with credible and verifiable cost data and ignored listings revenues from subscribers that helped to cover the costs of their listings databases. In Yellow Book USA v. Broadwing and Cincinnati Bell Telephone, defendants settled by lowering the rate from 22 cents to 4 cents per listing for base files. In MacLeodUSA Publishing Company v. Wood County Telephone Company, the FCC ordered that Wood County must charge no more than 4 cents per listing for base files, rather than its original rate of 65 cents.
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