FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty assured Competitive Carriers Association members that the agency understands their need for faster buildouts and access to more spectrum. “We are working to create a regulatory environment that empowers you, the private sector, to build and innovate,” she said in written remarks for CCA's annual convention, posted Wednesday.
NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said Tuesday she will retire in March. She began leading the group in July 2010. Starting at the rural communications association in 1986, Bloomfield was serving as vice president of government affairs there when she left in 2007 for jobs at Qwest and then Verizon. "This is the right time for our industry to make that change," now that USF's survival is less in doubt, she said. "Now that the debate is shifting to a new phase of challenges, it’s the perfect time ... for that next leader to take you all over the next mountain!"
Consumers’ Research and other challengers of the USF contribution factor in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to end their current challenge there. The government and challengers said in a filing with the court that they “hereby stipulate to the dismissal of the petitions in the above proceedings, with each side to bear its own costs and fees.”
Consumers’ Research and its allies made additional arguments at the FCC for why the agency should zero out the USF contribution factor for Q4 (see 2508110021), despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision that the factor is constitutional (see 2506270054).
A handful of right-leaning groups are pressing strongly for a bipartisan congressional working group to recommend funding USF via the appropriations process as part of a potential legislative revamp of the program, but other stakeholders said they still they favor various expansions of the initiative’s contributions base. Comments to the working group were due late Monday night as part of its recently relaunched bill consultations (see 2508010051). The right-leaning groups also called for the most far-reaching changes to the program’s governance and structure, in some cases seeking to ax the high-cost fund.
As policymakers look at reforms to the USF, they need to examine why so many people who are eligible for support don’t enroll in Lifeline and other programs, experts said Monday during an event hosted by Georgetown University's Center for Business and Public Policy. The session coincided with Monday's deadline for responding to the congressional USF working group's request for comments and proposals on USF reform.
Competitive Carriers Association membership is shrinking, but the remainder are hopeful about future spectrum auctions and policy calls that could mean the difference between life and death for many small players, CEO Tim Donovan said in an interview Thursday.
The FCC Wireline Bureau has ordered seven phone companies to repay a total of over $9 million to the USF after audits showed insufficient recordkeeping and noncompliance with accounting requirements related to the companies' efforts to fulfill their USF obligations, according to orders and a news release Wednesday. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in the release that the agency needs “to closely scrutinize USF support payments” to “ensure funding is used to efficiently connect rural households and businesses.”
NTCA filed in support of UP Fiber’s proposed acquisition of 40 wire centers in 42 exchanges and the associated customers from AT&T’s Michigan Bell (see 2507310023). Its comments, the only ones filed so far on the transaction, address a requested waiver to allow the creation of a study area for UP Fiber. “The transaction … will enable the provision of robust and reliable voice and broadband services to the areas that are the subject of the waiver without affecting existing” USF distributions, the group said this week in docket 25-281. UP Fiber's name is tied to its proposed service to the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Lawmakers and witnesses touted fiber over satellite and discussed USF reform and broadband mapping at a House Small Business Committee hearing on expanding broadband to help rural small businesses.