Four Missouri Republicans Warn FCC To Be Careful About USF/ICC Reforms
Four Missouri Republicans joined rural telcos’ campaign to ward off what they see as the worst of the pending Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms. Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer, Sam Graves, Jo Ann Emerson and Vicky Hartzler said a letter dated Tuesday and released the next day. “We believe that in order to achieve the goals of this [1996 Telecom] Act, changes to the USF and ICC system must be made carefully and in a way that would enable carriers serving rural areas to sustain and improve upon affordable broadband where it already exists, to encourage deployment to unserved customers and not to harm rural customers who already have broadband service,” the letter said.
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Luetkemeyer is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and the Republican Caucus. Graves chairs the House Small Business Committee. Emerson is on the House Appropriations committee and chairs its Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee. Hartzler is on the House Agriculture Committee. Rural telecom associations have been blitzing the capital in the last week. They're especially concerned by proposals that would cap the USF, and have gotten 30 senators and 50 representatives to sign letters to the FCC asking it to be careful with rural telcos. Three rural associations dispatched the Missouri delegates’ letters and said “the FCC should be getting the message loud and clear that the proposed rule needs to be changed.”
Rural carriers are continuing to participate in the USTelecom-led talks, hoping to come up with an industry-wide agreement on reforms. “We're working in good faith to work something up together,” NTCA Vice President Mike Romano told us Wednesday. Rurals aren’t trying to use the Hill to help torpedo reforms, he said. “Torpedoing is a bad thing for us because we do need the reform,” he said. “We'd just like to see reform done the right way.” The USTelecom-crafted “framework” is expected to be filed in early August (CD July 6 p6).
The NTCA and the INDATEL Group tried to explain to FCC staffers last week that even their best efforts to pool resources to deploy broadband can run into unexpected troubles, “such as geographic or terrain challenges” which “may act as a restrainer to deploying shared network facilities or undertaking efforts in combination,” a filing in docket 10-90 said. “In sum, the discussion developed the proposition that RLECs are aggressively developing collaborative efforts where those opportuntinities permit; where conditions support deployment; and where … capital is available.”