Movie of filings

Docket 01-92

April 2001 – December 2008

Notes & Caveats• Notes

– A line between two entities mean that they filed together– The width of a line indicates the number of pages in a filing. If there was more than one filing in a period, the

lines stack up on one another.– Graphs show entities that filed with others in the 01-92 (inter-carrier compensation) docket at the FCC from

its inception until the end of 2008. Entities that only filed on their own are not shown.• The complete filing data set The data set contains about 800 entities. Of these, about 300 co-filed with another entity at

least once (the ones shown here) and 531 filed only on their own account (the ones not shown)– Only links between nodes have meaning; position on the page meaningful, strictly speaking, though I have

tried to group strongly linked nodes together– Trade associations and coalitions have not been unpacked into their constituent entities. This distorts the

data somewhat, since e.g. AT&T is represented both on its own account and hidden within the “Missoula Plan Supporters” node

• Caveats– Dirty Data errors persist. I’ll probably be working on fixing them as long as this project continues…– Data largely reflects what’s shown in the metadata of the ECFS database, which can be flaky due to

misspellings (e.g. ATT for AT&T) or inaccuracy (e.g. ignoring a filing attributed to AT&T that was actually on behalf of a number of companies). • Some of the data was extracted from the actual documents filed. Anthony Jones of USTelecom provided invaluable help

in unpacking “et al.” filings in this way.

Filers Only

Filing intensity varies widely over time

Apr-Sep 2001

Oct 2001 – Oct 2002

Nov/Dec 2002

Sep – Dec 2002

Dec 2002 – Jan 2004

Feb – July 2004

Aug 2004

Sep 2004 – Apr 2005

May 2005

Jun-Jul 2005

Aug 2005 – Sep 2006

Oct 2006

Nov 2006

Dec 2006

Jan/Feb 2007

Mar/Apr 2007

May 2007

Jun 2007 – Jul 2008

Aug 2008

Sep 2008

Oct 2008

Nov 2008

Dec 2008

All Filings

Observations

• However, a large number of filings form one large connected graph (the blob in the center)– It’s connected in aggregate over the whole time series– In the course of the proceeding, one can find a link

between opposing parties e.g. a proponent of the “Missoula Plan” like AT&T is linked to an opponent like XO via both of them co-filing with the CTIA at different dates (“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”)

• There are many parties that only co-file once or twice.– Most of them are pairs– There are a few large groups of co-filers that show up only

once in the record, and aren’t seen before or after