NTCA Trumpets Support in Record for Proposed FCC Elimination of USF Voice Rate Floor
NTCA said the FCC record backs eliminating a USF rate floor that requires rate-of-return telcos to charge customers a certain monthly amount for basic voice service to receive subsidy support (see 1707110055). "Nearly every party commenting on [an] NPRM agrees…
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that the provision should be eliminated," the rural telco group said in a reply posted Tuesday in docket 10-90. Rural customers are penalized with annual rate increases that burden both state commissions, which must review them, and small carriers, which must make filings and notify customers, the group said. "The latter process also strains the relationship between [rural telcos] and their customers." It said support of cable's NCTA for keeping the rate floor in some form "inexplicably misses what the NPRM and all other parties do not; High Cost Loop Support funding reductions flowing from non-compliance with the rate floor do not accrue back to ratepayers. Such support is redistributed to other carriers by operation of the Commission’s rules."