An FCC rule has created a ‘one-way ratchet’ effect that’s reduced...
An FCC rule has created a “one-way ratchet” effect that’s reduced USF support to carriers that need it, small rural companies said in comments Monday on a petition by the Coalition for Equity in Switching Support. Under the commission’s…
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dial-equipment-minute weighting rule, a small ILEC’s LSS support is reduced when its number of access lines climbs above a specified threshold. The coalition complained that a small ILEC won’t get more support if its access-line count falls below the threshold. In comments this week, no party opposed the coalition, which wants the FCC to apply the threshold rule in both directions. With access line loss intensifying, many companies are now “receiving less LSS than other companies with a comparable number of lines and comparable switching costs,” said the National Exchange Carrier Association, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and three other coalitions of small incumbent local exchange carriers, in joint comments. The problem is particularly severe for small ILECs, which face high per- subscriber switching costs “because they lack the number of subscribers or the concentrated subscriber population that would enable them to take advantage of economies of scale and scope,” they said. The rule is hurting consumers in South Carolina, said Randy Mitchell, a commissioner of the state’s public service commission, in separate comments. Affected companies there completely lost LSS support, and as a result are having difficulty keeping rates low and maintaining and developing infrastructure, he said.