Apparently the FCC has been taking lessons from telemarketers, effectively charging a "processing fee" on top of all licensing fees. They refer to this as a "regulatory fee" or "administrative fee" and add it on to your licensing fee (or not, if they choose) instead of just bundling it in.
Supposedly the cost of processing the registration is reviewed every year or so and in this case, the cost of processing the registration fee, was higher than the income derived from the fee. So it was simply more profitable for the FCC to DROP the registration fee and process.
Which is most peculiar, you'd think they'd increase the fee to continue making their mandated profits. Government logic, go figure. Despite the FCC's claims to be following Reaganomics and calculating all fees on a "cost plus" basis, I think we all know their fee structures could be determined by throwing darts, or spaghetti, at a wall.