Congress should ensure that broadband efforts maintain support for rural telcos, executives of four major rural telco associations told congressional staff at a closed meeting Monday of the Rural Telecommunications Task Force, a subcommittee of the House Rural Caucus. Reps. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Lee Terry, R-Neb., are the co-chairmen of the task force, but didn’t attend the briefing. The Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Western Telecommunications Alliance and the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies asked Congress to ensure that rural broadband providers continue to receive support from the Universal Service Fund, intercarrier compensation “or some combination,” ITTA President Curt Stamp said in an interview after the meeting. It’s hard for rural carriers to justify investing in very remote areas without “something to fill in the gap,” such as stimulus money, USF “or some other mechanism,” he said. The rural carriers had approached the task force about holding a briefing last year, but today’s meeting didn’t come together until a few weeks ago, said ITTA Vice President Paul Raak. The task force is expected to invite the cable and wireless industries in for later briefings, Stamp said. Meanwhile, the rural telcos hope to hold more briefings with other congressional groups and plan to meet separately with every rural member, Raak said. He expects broadband to be a big issue for Congress this year. “Once you get past energy and healthcare … broadband is next.” But the Hill seems to be waiting for the National Broadband Plan before moving, Stamp said. “I don’t get the sense that there are a lot of members who are trying to influence the content of the plan.” But they'll likely have questions and suggestions when it’s delivered, he said.
Gila River Telecommunications is urging the FCC to grant permission in docket 80-286 to alter its intrastate and interstate networks. The telco determined which of its networks were subject to intrastate and interstate funding, and voluntarily locked them in 2001, “to reduce regulatory burdens as suggested by the commission,” it said in a filing. When GRTI changed its switches and carrier systems, its network “evolved from a switch-based network to a more efficient circuit-based network, to better utilize state-of the-art network design.” The petition was filed in Nov. 2006, and still remains pending. The freeze has cost GRTI more than $1.4 million annually in USF high cost support, it said. To continue expanding its network and providing “affordable service without rate increases to the mostly low- income tribal community, GRTI needs the high cost support to which it would be entitled but for its 2001 interim election.”
Congress is watching the planned merger of Comcast and NBC Universal closely, and members are expected to weigh what it means to consumers and competitors, said Hill and industry figures. “This is one of the larger consolidations in the telecom/media space in history, and it is a matter of public interest, [and] it’s a matter of interest to those of us involved in telecommunications policy,” said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., in an interview. Boucher also outlined his legislative priorities for the new term, including work on a spectrum inventory, Internet privacy and the Universal Service Fund.
Ascent Media Group notified the FCC of its support for a series of petitions in docket 06-122. Filed by Ascent, Millennium Telecom and Comscape, they seek reconsideration of USAC procedures in determining the liability of companies that make mistakes filing Form 499Q. “Ascent received a USAC invoice for $717,000 for a single month” after the company made an administrative error on Form 499Q, it said in a filing. The current “revision policy is inequitable and inconsistent with commercially reasonable practices,” Ascent said: “The rigidity of the current policy creates unreasonable hardship on USF contributors” and “in cases of inadvertent mistakes enforcement of the policy isn’t necessary to administer the USF.” Ascent said it was assessed more than $2.1 million by the USF, “while its total telecommunications revenues for the quarter were only $2 million.”
Former FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate met with staffers from the media and wireline bureaus and the broadband task force to discuss devising a plan for increasing digital literacy among children. “Reform and modernization of the USF relative to the National Broadband Plan” can “benefit America’s children regarding digital literacy and citizenship,” she said in an ex parte filing. Groups like minorities, rural students and special education children “must be part of an overall national broadband plan,” Tate said.
The first phase of a “Zap the Gap” program to improve cellphone service in northern Mississippi has been “a huge success,” Chairman Brandon Presley of the Public Service Commission said Tuesday. His office has forwarded to the companies involved almost 1,500 reports of little or no service that the commission has collected since August, he said. “It’s time for the cellular companies to tell us how they are going to fix these problems,” Presley said. Since 2005 the federal Universal Service Fund has paid wireless eligible telecommunications carriers more than $512 million in dedicated high-cost subsidies to extend and improve wireless service in rural Mississippi, he told us.
Tennessee should keep separate state funding to speed broadband deployment and any state universal service fund, the Tennessee Regulatory Authority said Friday in a report on legislation proposed to remedy problems caused by diminishing revenue from intrastate switched access. The Tennessee Rural Affordability Fund (TRAF), authorized but not yet mandated into existence, would be funded much as the federal universal service fund is, the report said. The proposed legislation covers phone companies serving the most remote areas -- rural incumbent local exchange carriers and rural phone cooperatives with fewer than a million lines. The bill would require such carriers to reduce their intrastate switched access rates to their interstate switched rate levels. “The revenue loss resulting from these reductions will be recovered from funds paid into the TRAF,” the report said. The authority urged legislators to focus on “keeping local phone rates affordable” and to make sure that “any funding to support rural broadband deployment should be established as a separate portable fund.” Legislators should not set a statewide benchmark rate for local phone service “as a litmus test to determine support from TRAF,” the authority said. The bill should include a sunset provision requiring a report and recommendation from the authority before legislators consider extending the fund’s life, it said. The fund should be capped as determined by the state regulator, the report said. Recipients of money from the new universal service fund should be designated “carriers of last resort” and should have to provide Lifeline, Link-up and other “social and safety services,” it said. Companies electing market regulation should not be allowed to draw from the fund, the authority said. “Because a carrier operating pursuant to market regulation can adjust its rates to respond to competition, the need for specific subsidies such as that from the TRAF would become unnecessary,” it said. “Therefore it is appropriate to cease such TRAF assistance if the carrier elects Market Regulation.” Carriers paying into the federal USF also should pay into the TRAF, the authority said, asking that the Legislature empower the regulator “to assess and collect fees” and “establish criteria and procedures for assessing, collecting and dispensing fees, and for monitoring the operation of the TRAF.” If the bill is enacted, it should include a provision delaying implementation for a year to give the authority time to write procedures and criteria for running the fund, the report said.
With a deadline next week on the latest inquiry on special access prices, a Sprint Nextel executive said Tuesday the FCC appears ready to address the company’s long standing complaints. Sprint is also asking the FCC to act quickly to reallocate spectrum bands totaling 100 MHz, which the company believes could be addressed well ahead of eventual decisions about broadcast spectrum or spectrum in federal government hands.
TelePacific requested a review and reversal from the FCC of the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s decision that subjected the company’s wireline broadband Internet access service to universal service fees. USAC based its decision “on a fundamental misreading of the commission’s Wireline Broadband Order,” which states “what matters is the finished product made available through a service rather than the facilities used to provide it,” the group said. “Because the finished product that TelePacific offers is wireline broadband Internet access service, the service is indisputably an information service that is exempt from USF,” TelePacific said. It also requested a stay of USAC’s decision while the commission considers the review request.
Financing broadband projects in rural America is a major challenge and lenders need a stable cost-recovery mechanism and help from the government to see that loans get repaid and networks are expanded, financial companies and organizations said in comments at the FCC. The comments were in response to the 28th public notice for the National Broadband Plan, on deployment financing. They were the last comments due at the commission on a notice for the plan.