Comm Daily Notebook

of USF contributions, the “USAC’s (Universal Service Administrative Company) tactics can be extremely heavy-handed and unfair to carriers,” said Jon Canis of Arent Fox. He called the company a “rogue agency” and said personnel “act in ways that they know to be illegal.” USAC concentrates on collecting as much USF as it can and it generates fines, he said. “Even if you can demonstrate you were acting in good faith, even though you can demonstrate that you did everything possible to comply and everything possible to remediate as soon as you could, it doesn’t matter.” Arent Fox lawyers advised that any CLEC set up a “detailed, documented and consistently applied method of computing USF payment obligations.” Canis also cautioned the telcos about CPNI reporting requirements. The way the FCC handles the requirements “is a regulatory game designed exclusively to extract revenues from victimized CLECs,” he said. In 2008, more than 600 carriers received notices of apparent liability for failing to send compliance letters by the deadline of March 1, Canis said. The action was meant to “demonstrate toughness of FCC enforcement and generate payment of fines,” he said. Some cases in which CLECs are seeking unpaid access charges have been held up awaiting referrals to the FCC, Arent Fox said. Several cases have been pending more than three years.