Congress Not Motivated to Fix USF, Hopes FCC Can Figure It Out, Walden Aide Says
Congress is more than happy to let the FCC sort out the USF mess on its own, a House Communications Subcommittee Republican aide said Wednesday. “There is no motivation currently on the Hill to delve into these issues,” said Ray Baum, aide to Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. Even if there were motivation, “there is really no consensus,” he said, pointing to a schism between free-market proponents who'd like to see the fund disappear, and some who want it to grow. To Baum, Congress’s role at the moment is to seek input from interested parties and pass it on to the FCC to come up with a workable solution. “If this issue doesn’t lend itself to agency expertise, there isn’t one that does,” he told a Catholic University conference. “We're really wishing them the best."
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The FCC is working to prioritize the many petitions for reconsideration it has received following the reforms approved in October’s USF/intercarrier compensation order, said Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Carol Mattey. Those raising issues regarding implementation aspects occurring this year will go to “the front of the line,” she said, noting “there’s a very high bar for reconsideration.” Companies that simply repeat the arguments they made before are likely to get little help, she said; the commission is looking to see whether companies are making fresh arguments and providing new evidence.
Mattey discussed the sequence for implementation of the order: Determine how much support to award to price-cap carriers; get the Mobility Fund up and running; and set benchmarks for capital and operational expenditures. The bureau is also examining the four waiver requests it has received, she said. The commission is actively working out procedures for September’s Mobility Fund Phase I auction, Mattey said. Auction 901 will award $300 million to carriers that commit to provide 3G or better mobile voice and broadband services in areas where such services are unavailable. After that, the commission will work on procedures for Phase II, which will provide $500 million annually for ongoing support of mobile services, Mattey said. “It would be surprising if there were no public-interest obligations” in order to receive Phase II money, Mattey said.
Access charges on VoIP traffic don’t make any sense for IP networks, Google telecom policy counsel Adrienne Biddings said when asked about the biggest failings of the USF/intercarrier compensation order. These kinds of subsidies impede monetization and disincentivize investment, she said, and “delay our nation’s transition to all IP.” Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, said he wants to see universal availability of broadband at affordable rates. He said he’s also concerned about the USF contribution factor and its burden on consumers, and the “asymmetrical nature of some of these burdens,” in which USF contributions from the legacy telephone system “are being channeled to fund a broadband expansion and adoption program.”