USCellular CEO Raising Alarms on Pending USF Vote
USCellular CEO John Rooney Wednesday raised an alert about proposed changes in Universal Service Fund rules, likely teed-up for the FCC’s Nov. 4 agenda meeting. He said the changes could have a devastating effect on wireless carriers seeking money from the USF. Rooney said the proposed rule changes are huge for companies like USCellular, but they're getting limited attention with a little more than a month before the meeting. US Cellular also submitted to the FCC new poll data showing people want USF support for wireless in five states.
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“What the chairman and the FCC are trying to do doesn’t make much sense from a public policy viewpoint and is probably ill advised,” Rooney told us. “There’s a rush to judgment here that probably isn’t backed up by the facts.” Rooney asked why the FCC would schedule a vote on an important issue like USF reform for election day. “It’s devious,” he said. “Everyone is going to pay attention to the election. Who the hell is going to pay attention to a little order like that that strikes half a billion or a billion dollars in subsidies for the rural wireless companies?”
Rooney said public safety considerations alone weigh against cutting USF support for wireless. “You're dealing with public safety issues of immense importance,” he said. “The FCC makes us go out and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to put in E-911 service so that we can provide rural America with location services when people are in trouble and then doesn’t do anything to fund those areas where the service is needed.” Rooney said he visited rural areas where US Cellular installed cell towers and spoke with fire, police and other government officials. “They are just ecstatic that someone listened to them and put a cell site in so they could effectively serve their population better,” he said. “This is not luxury service anymore, this is essential telecommunications service.”
Rooney asked why the U.S. continues to spend each year on wireline companies that installed service decades earlier. “It’s not like these guys are out there dramatically expanding service. They're not,” he said. “And they can’t use the money from the fund for broadband service. It’s prohibited.” Rooney said he has spoken with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and members of the FCC but has not met with Chairman Kevin Martin, Rooney said. “I'm definitely not on his Christmas card list,” he said of Martin. “What the hell is he doing making a major move like this two months before he’s scheduled to leaves office?”
An attorney active in USF and intercarrier compensation issues on the part of the wireless industry said he has been surprised at the lack of lobbying at the FCC in recent weeks. The lawyer said the FCC likely will approve changes that will “keep rural ILECs whole at the cost of wireless” competitors. In addition to eliminating the identical support rule, intercarrier compensation reform proposals before the FCC would require wireless carriers and others to pay more for transport between the large ILEC tandem and the rural ILEC’s area, the attorney said. An FCC official said Wednesday the changes that will be proposed at the meeting remain unclear.
Meanwhile, US Cellular said its poll in Maine, Missouri, Oregon, West Virginia and Wisconsin, where the company has service, found that 88 to 92 percent of respondents “feel that it is important to have reliable and consistent cellular phone coverage in rural areas for public health and safety.”