The Utah Rural Telecom Association supported state USF changes in comments Thursday at the Public Service Commission. Draft rules may take effect Jan. 1 (see 2111150065). One proposed change to establish an $18 per line monthly broadband subsidy for low-income customers “will have a significant positive impact on the affordability of broadband in rural Utah,” the association said in docket 21-R008-04. Setting a standard $25 per line monthly rate to be imputed to rate-of-return regulated providers for wholesale consumer broadband-only loops, up from the current weighted average rate of $8.97, will ensure consistency among rate-of-return carriers and help preserve Utah USF, it said.
The FCC wants comments by Jan. 18, replies by Jan. 31, in docket 21-476 on its report to Congress on the future of the USF, said a notice of inquiry listed in Thursday's Daily Digest. The report was mandated by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The NOI seeks comment on how the law's new broadband funding impacts existing USF programs and on "improving its effectiveness in achieving the universal service goals for broadband." It also seeks comment on USF's contribution factor and any recommendations the commission should make to Congress for legislative action. Commissioner Brendan Carr was the only commissioner to release a statement, saying USF is "stuck in a death spiral." Carr again said Big Tech should pay into USF (see 2106010041).
California Public Utilities Commissioners voted 5-0 to deny LTD Broadband the application approval it needed to get about $187.5 million in Rural Digital Opportunities Fund (RDOF) support over 10 years. At a virtual meeting Thursday, commissioners also by unanimous consent cleared multiple California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grants that LTD and others said partially overlapped areas where they won RDOF support (see 2112140019, 2112090011 and 2112080046). The CPUC got more comments Wednesday on a plan to shift to connections-based state USF contributions.
Judges grilled a Public Utility Commission attorney on why the PUC thought it could stop fully funding Texas USF (TUSF). At a livestreamed hearing Wednesday, the 3rd Texas District Court of Appeals in Austin heard an appeal by the Texas Telephone Association (TTA), Texas Statewide Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (TSTCI), Lumen and Windstream (case 03-21-00294-CV). The rural telcos are challenging the Travis County District Court in Austin dismissing their lawsuit against the PUC for not raising the TUSF surcharge on consumer bills to fully fund USF (see 2107130041). Gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke (D) supported the lawsuit Tuesday.
Characterizing NAB’s push for regulatory fees on tech companies as a Wi-Fi tax is “plainly false” and “intellectually dishonest,” NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan blogged Tuesday (see 2110230001). The FCC’s current regulatory fee regime is “sloppy at best” because it requires broadcasters to pay fees to support initiatives that don’t involve broadcasting, such as the USF, he said. “The Facebooks of the world like business plans that rely not only on free, unregulated spectrum, but also Commission resources subsidized from regulatory fees that they are not obligated to pay.” NAB’s request to update regulatory fee payors doesn’t mention Wi-Fi and goes beyond unlicensed spectrum, Kaplan said. “Broadcasters are not seeking to escape paying regulatory fees,” he said. “It should not be controversial for broadcasters to cry foul when being forced to subsidize enormous companies like Microsoft, which generate revenue beyond the GDP of most countries (even after paying groups like Public Knowledge),” Kaplan said. “If public interest groups truly supported what’s best for the public, they wouldn’t simply kick and scream because Facebook, Google, and Microsoft may have to pay their fair share.” Reg fees for unlicensed spectrum is what the FCC sought comment on after NAB's petition, "because those were their words," emailed Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. "Every single trade association that filed read this the same way -- as a tax on WiFi. If there is any intellectual dishonesty here, it is the effort of NAB to avoid admitting they proposed something so stupid." The FCC and Information Technology Industry Council didn’t comment.
The FCC Wireline Bureau OK'd the National Exchange Carrier Association's average schedule USF high cost loop support formula modifications for 2022, said an order Monday. The bureau said the results and calculations "appear to be accurate and complete." The formula takes effect Jan. 1.
The Q1 USF contribution factor is 25.2%, down from 29.1% in Q4, said an FCC Office of Managing Director public notice in Monday’s Daily Digest (see 2109100069). Program support is projected at $1.78 billion.
The federal government is increasingly rife with spectrum fiefdoms among agencies, contrary to the FCC's core purpose as a centralized point of spectrum policy decision-making, Commissioner Brendan Carr said Wednesday during the Practicing Law Institute's annual telecom policy and regulation seminar. He said updating memorandums of understanding would help, but ultimately there must be deference to the expert agency making a final decision. Such "devolution" of spectrum policy will be a permanent fixture, but that trend needs some reversing, he said.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission should open a rulemaking on whether to require more public disclosure of state USF data filed by contributors, Oklahoma USF (OUSF) Administrator Brandy Wreath reported Monday. Federal laws on customer proprietary network information (CPNI) “may complicate how certain information may be disclosed to the Commission,” Wreath cautioned. In the possible rulemaking, “discrete data elements could be identified and considered based on such things as the value public disclosure could bring to the administration of the OUSF, the availability of the data, potential variances between or among the different types of Contributing Providers, and how to ensure that CPNI is protected.” Oklahoma Commissioner Bob Anthony has pushed for more OUSF transparency. The commission switched to connections-based USF contributions last month (see 2112010014).
Oklahoma’s transition to a connections-based state USF contribution mechanism is “so far, so good,” said Brandy Wreath, the Oklahoma USF (OUSF) administrator, in an interview. Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) members ordered the interim change in August to try to stabilize the OUSF while parties work on writing recommendations for the legislature (see 2108050049). In Tuesday comments at the California Public Utilities Commission, wireless companies and consumer groups panned a staff recommendation to shift to a flat, per-line surcharge.