Wireless Industry Seeks Modification of ETC Requirements

The FCC earlier this year adopted more requirements for ETC designation proceedings, as urged by the Federal- State Joint Board on Universal Service. The Commission also asked states with jurisdiction over ETC designations to adopt them. The goal was to ensure a more predictable ETC designation process. But CTIA and wireless carriers later asked the agency to reconsider the order, saying they find fault with the 5-year build-out plan requirement.

That requirement “serves as a disincentive to wireless carriers seeking ETC status, particularly inasmuch as a wireless ETC will be held accountable on an annual basis for any departure from its established 5-year plan,” Alltel said. Responding to oppositions by wireline entities to petitions for reconsideration, the carrier said the 5-year time frame “goes well beyond the window for USF funding actually received by the ETC and for which it must account on an annual basis.” Alltel said an annual certification requirement is a better way to test an ETC’s use of USF funding.

Requiring wireless ETCs to make predictions 5 years out would mean “inaccuracies,” Dobson Cellular Systems said. In fact, Dobson said, 2 state commissions have rejected the 5-year structure in favor of a 2-year requirement due to the telecom market’s dynamic nature. Dobson urged the FCC to reject the ILECs’ attempt to condition a briefer planning time frame for wireless ETCs on “an unreasonable requirement for ubiquity of coverage.” Instead, to ensure LEC ETCs properly use universal service support, the FCC also should require them to file network improvement plans, the firm said. “Many rural LECs are lightly regulated or unregulated at the state level,” Dobson said.

Nextel Partners asked the FCC to require submission and consideration of projections based on an 18-month time frame, which, it said, would provide “a much more reliable and accurate snapshot of provider plan.” Nextel accused wireline interests of trying to “erect roadblocks to the designation and functioning of wireless ETCs,” by having the build-out plan requirement apply only to competitive ETCs and not to incumbent wireline carriers. Wireline firms have justified the 5-year planning requirement with their assertion that wireless ETCs should be required to construct a network with a ubiquitous service. But, Nextel Partners said, “given that the incumbent wireline carriers have had more than 50 years to construct their networks and… still cannot meet the ubiquitous service requirement, it is unrealistic to expect wireless carriers to build out ubiquitous networks in a 5-year time frame.”

Wireline interests defended the 5-year requirement. That stipulation doesn’t aim “to hinder competition in rural and high-cost service areas or to subject petitioners for [ETC] designation to burdensome administrative requirements,” the Independent Telephone & Telecom Alliance (ITTA), the Western Telecom Alliance (WTA) and TDS Telecom said in a joint filing. Calling the 5-year build-out and other ETC requirements “reasonable,” they said the requirements would “ensure that USF support is distributed only to carriers that provide ‘universal’ service consistent with statutory requirements and subject to comparable obligations with respect to network coverage and service quality.”

Echoing the ITTA/WTA/TDS filing, the Nebraska Cos. agreed with earlier NTCA and OPASTCO arguments that “the build-out of a network capable of serving all customers in a designated service territory upon a reasonable request goes to the very heart of what it means to be an ETC.” The firm said the FCC should continue to require ETCs to submit information at the wire center level and let states decide what constitutes a “reasonable” request for service for all ETCs they designate. Both positions were opposed by the wireless industry.