The National Telecom Co-op. Assn. (NTCA) urged the Federal-State ...
The National Telecom Co-op. Assn. (NTCA) urged the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service to recommend that all pending eligible telecom carrier (ETC) designation applications before the Commission “be stayed until new portability rules and ETC guidelines are adopted…
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and implemented.” It said the stay would give the Commission time to develop new universal service rules that would “remedy the flaws in the identical support rule” and establish new ETC guidelines that would “strengthen the public interest determination in rural areas, without increasing the size of the universal service fund [USF] through the granting pending ETC designations based on the current inequitable portability rules and insufficient ETC designation procedures.” The NTCA also recommended that the board make its own recommendation, instead of creating an industry task force that would “unduly delay the proceeding and create further uncertainty.” However, Western Wireless said there was a “need” for a competitive universal service task force process, analogous to the Rural Task Force (RTF): “Such a task force would create the possibility of an open discussion of the difficult issues, among open-minded people who certainly will disagree, but at least will listen to one another.” It said a task force also would help “fully inform members of Congress, the Joint Board and the FCC about the underlying facts of the universal service system as well as the optimal means for reform.”