TracFone took aim at the Link Up for America Coalition...

divert millions of dollars a year from the USF to provide Link Up subsidies (especially to wireless resellers) to provide service to low income households,” TracFone said in its letter, responding to a coalition filing from last week (http://xrl.us/bmjabi): “The Coalition asserts that Link Up support is somehow necessary to enable ETCs to initiate wireless services to low income consumers. That statement is unsupported and is facially false.” TracFone said it’s disturbed that the coalition views Link-Up as “a revenue replacement mechanism” and about the Coalition’s apparent belief that its members are entitled to Link-Up reimbursements for activation fees. “Nowhere has the Coalition provided any documentation as to which of its members -- if any -- are charged activation fees and how much -- if anything -- those members pay in activation fees,” TracFone said, saying the coalition’s claims of other wireless carriers’ activation fees “are especially curious.” Speaking of the coalition’s ex parte notice, TracFone said: “Nowhere does the Coalition offer any explanation as to why its two members’ activation fees are nearly double those charged by every other wireless carrier identified by the Coalition as having an activation fee. Neither does the Coalition indicate whether any of those seven named carriers impose activation fees on Lifeline customers. Not one of those carriers charges Lifeline customers activation fees. Apparently, only the Coalition members and a handful of minor carriers with similar strategies have the temerity to subject Lifeline customers to activation fees and even the greater temerity to ask the USF -- and those who fund the USF -- to subsidize those activation fees.” The FCC was expected to circulate an order on Lifeline Tuesday evening, and much of the recent lobbying has focused on Link-Up reimbursements. The coalition’s lawyer couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday.