FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to add broadband obligations to the Universal Service Fund, move to numbers- based USF contribution and apply reciprocal compensation rates to all traffic, he said Wednesday. At a news briefing, the chairman said implementing his plan would “modernize” USF and intercarrier compensation for a broadband, IP-based world. Martin late Tuesday circulated a draft version of the plan, including a report and order, order on remand and further notice of proposed rulemaking. Commissioners will vote at the agency’s Nov. 4 meeting. If the item is adopted, it would apply to 48 states, exempting Alaska and Hawaii, Martin said.
The FCC’s October meeting has been changed for at least a third time as Chairman Kevin Martin failed to get any other commissioner to support a DTV-related notice that drew internal controversy (CD Oct 8 p6). No items will be voted on Wednesday, at what was to have been a regular monthly meeting in Nashville, agency officials said. Instead, four FCC members will gather at Vanderbilt University’s medical center Wednesday morning for an en banc hearing on obesity, while Commissioner Michael Copps will participate by phone, agency officials said.
Odds are increasingly slim of comprehensive overhaul of FCC intercarrier compensation rules or the Universal Service Fund this year or before Kevin Martin’s chairmanship ends, officials said. Intercarrier compensation issues are teed up for the Nov. 4 meeting, but FCC officials said they have seen nothing from the chairman’s office or the Wireline Bureau about what the chairman may envision. And most commissioners will be on travel the week of Oct. 20, complicating any discussions leading up to the meeting. An FCC official didn’t comment.
ORLANDO -- Due to more pressing issues, neither presidential candidate will focus on telecom policy immediately after the election, surrogates for Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a CompTel debate Tuesday. However, candidates are interested in telecom issues, differing on broadband deployment and network management, among other issues, surrogates said. Larry Irving, Internet Innovation Alliance co-chairman, represented Obama. Lee Dunn, a legislative aide to the McCain presidential campaign, took the Republican side.
ORLANDO -- The telecom industry still is divided on how to revamp intercarrier compensation, indicated speakers at a CompTel panel on the topic. The FCC appears to be teeing up the topic for a Nov. 4 vote. But in a late Monday panel, officials from AT&T, XO Communications the VON Coalition and the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates disagreed not only on overhaul proposals, but on whether the current system even needs fixing.
ORLANDO -- Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., urged competitive telecom companies to form a Washington alliance to fight large phone company lobbying. In a CompTel keynote, he said the alliance should include Comcast, Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, Google and competitive local exchange carriers. A coalition of that scale could be effective in combating AT&T, Verizon and other large companies’ significant Hill presence, he said. Strategy aside, Pickering predicted sunny days for competitors. Election day and the financial crisis create new opportunities for CLECs to push policy goals, he said.
Broadcasters’ fears of more regulations on how to serve their communities (CD Sept 4 p4) won’t be realized in 2008, if comments by two FCC members -- one supporting new rules, the other opposing -- are a guide. Both Commissioner Michael Copps, long an advocate of localism rules, and Commissioner Robert McDowell, a foe of such rules, said Monday in separate interviews that the FCC is running out of time to address the issue this year. But Copps still wants comprehensive rule reform.
The FCC should adopt “competitively neutral” universal service program rules treating rural and urban areas equally, Maine’s Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, to the agency in a letter. Eliminating the Interstate Access and Common Line Support rules, as proposed, would mean a 46 percent drop in USF support in Maine, they said. “We urge you to reject any proposal that would reduce funding for competitive carriers” because it would harm rural consumers and perhaps public safety, they said, urging that reforms not favor any technology.
USCellular CEO John Rooney Wednesday raised an alert about proposed changes in Universal Service Fund rules, likely teed-up for the FCC’s Nov. 4 agenda meeting. He said the changes could have a devastating effect on wireless carriers seeking money from the USF. Rooney said the proposed rule changes are huge for companies like USCellular, but they're getting limited attention with a little more than a month before the meeting. US Cellular also submitted to the FCC new poll data showing people want USF support for wireless in five states.
Rural carriers asked Congress to intervene in FCC efforts to overhaul intercarrier compensation. In a scathing letter to House and Senate members, CEO Michael Brunner of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association condemned a $0.0007 uniform terminating access rate proposed for all traffic by AT&T, Verizon and others. The agency is “seriously considering” the proposal, which Brunner predicts would “wrongly relieve communications industry titans… of more than $8 billion in annual access and intercarrier compensation responsibilities,” he said: “For rural carriers alone, this disruption could jeopardize more than $2 billion” annually. The plan also would affect rural telecom lenders, which hold $9.1 billion total in loans, he said. Brunner condemned the idea of using the Universal Service Fund to replace carriers’ lost access revenue. USF “has already been strained by unbridled program growth resulting from regulatory lapses,” he said.