Adam Bender

The FCC should impose a wireless spectrum aggregation cap to curb consolidation and top national carriers’ dominance, regional carriers said in Tuesday comments. The small, rural companies backed a Rural Telecommunications Group proposal to impose a 110 MHz limit county-by-county on all commercial terrestrial wireless spectrum below 2.3 GHz. But big carriers and others warned that a cap could stunt the growth of the wireless broadband industry.

The FCC will vote Dec. 18 on an order to establish a free wireless Internet service using AWS-3 spectrum, Chairman Kevin Martin said in a press briefing Wednesday. The plan’s technical specifics are similar to the plan the agency considered in May, but includes revisions desired by another commissioner, Martin said. Martin has gotten positive feedback from some commissioner offices and is “hopeful” he'll get three votes, he said.

The Office of Management and Budget rejected the backup power requirements for cell sites set in the FCC’s Hurricane Katrina Order. In a decision that isn’t binding on the commission, the OMB said it found several procedural flaws that violated the Paperwork Reduction Act. The backup power rule, on hold during the OMB’s study, is being challenged in court by wireless carriers. The rule would have required carriers and tower companies to install batteries at 220,000 sites (CD Nov 14 p4).

Largely reiterating past arguments, telecom interests fought over when and how to revamp the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation. In comments last week, carriers, states and others dissected three FCC overhaul plans, known as Appendices A, B and C. Appendix A is FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s Oct. 14 revamp plan, B is a proposal addressing USF only, and C a revised Martin plan incorporating changes sought by the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and other groups. Earlier this month, Martin said a revamp this year is unlikely (CD Nov 19 p2). But other commissioners have said they want to vote on an order at the December meeting. (See separate story on the FCC agenda in this issue.)

The FCC should allow rural local exchange carriers to opt out of reporting subscriber counts by census tract, without first showing hardship, said the Rural Independent Competitive Alliance and the Organization for the Promotion of Advancement and Promotion of Small Telecommunications Companies. In joint comments Monday, the rural groups said the agency should instead let RLECs report a list of service addresses or Geographic Information System service coordinates. In the order setting the census-tract rule, the FCC said carriers that showed “significant hardship” could report in that way. But the order didn’t define the qualification, nor did it say how a carrier could make the showing, the rural associations said. Providing an alternative option for RLECs is justified, because the new census-tract rules “require major alterations to rural LEC’s recordkeeping, training and business practices,” they said. “With generally small staffs, recordkeeping and other regulatory changes are disproportionately burdensome for rural LECs.” Meanwhile, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance urged the FCC to push back the March 1 deadline for the new census-tract data. The FCC should set the deadline at least 120 days after the revised Form 497 and instructions become available, ITTA said in comments. OMB will likely approve the new form in late December, at the earliest, it said. “Even if the [FCC] receives OMB approval for the revised Form 497 shortly thereafter, filers would have, at most, approximately two months (or 40 eight-hour business days) to compile data and submit the report to the [FCC],” ITTA said. “Deferral of the filing deadline will provide additional time to work with vendors and help minimize the degree to which data will need to be input manually.”

A “do it yourself” broadband model in which consumers buy their own last-mile fiber connections could be a path to more broadband deployment in the U.S., said Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu. He and Google policy analyst Derek Slater presented their paper, “Homes with Tails,” in a Friday New America Foundation panel. The proposal met some resistance from panelists representing Verizon and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

The apparent disappearance of an FCC order on submarine cable regulatory fees has riled supporters of an industry proposal signed by AT&T, Verizon, Level 3 and several private submarine cable operators, an industry official close to the proceeding said. Supporters of the proposal expected the FCC to release an order in early October, the official said. But the item still hasn’t surfaced on the eighth floor, and industry officials have heard conflicting reports on whether the order is even written, the person said. Many on the eighth floor don’t know where the order is or why there’s been a holdup, either, an FCC official said.

The FCC got tough questioning from federal appeals court judges for denying Verizon unbundling forbearance in six metropolitan statistical areas last year. In Monday oral argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judges David Sentelle, Thomas Griffith and Harry Edwards spent most of their time asking why the FCC used only a market-share test to assess competition levels. In contrast, the judges asked Verizon’s attorney few questions, ending the argument with 10 minutes to spare in Verizon’s rebuttal time.

The FCC must improve administration of the Universal Service Fund, USF payers and recipients said last week in comments on an October FCC inquiry into how it might strengthen USF management, administration and oversight (CD Sept 15 p7). High error rates cited in a 2007 Inspector General audit worry the FCC. Meanwhile, Universal Service Administrative Co. and parent National Exchange Carrier Association urged the FCC to approve a divestiture of USAC from NECA.

With President-elect Barack Obama set to lead in 2009, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein hopes broadband deployment and other “long-neglected” issues “finally get the attention they deserve,” he said Thursday in a keynote at a University of Nebraska College of Law conference. Afterward, a panel of telecom officials said the FCC and Congress should focus on broadband deployment next year.