An AT&T proposal to lower intrastate access rates to interstate terminating access rate levels is “deficient,” said the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. Commenting on an AT&T request for interim declaratory ruling and limited waivers related to intercarrier compensation and Universal Service Fund reform, NTCA urged the FCC to accept AT&T’s proposal only if it also adopts an NTCA plan filed last month (CD July 14 p9). NTCA agreed with AT&T that the FCC should move intrastate costs to interstate cost recovery rates including subscriber line charges or originating interstate access charges, and that the FCC should declare that Internet traffic must pay access charges. But NTCA said AT&T’s bid to lower intrastate access rates is “specifically tailored for price-cap carriers, and provides no relief to rural consumers served by [rate-of-return] carriers.” NTCA wants interstate access rates capped at current levels until a permanent access replacement mechanism is set. Access costs not recovered from capped rates would come from USF Interstate Common Line Support (ICLS), it said. NTCA filed comments two days ahead of a Thursday deadline. An AT&T spokesman said “comprehensive reform would fix the vast majority of the problems that these various petitions seek to resolve.”
Commissioners strongly prefer voting ahead of time on two circulating wireline items set for the Aug. 22 FCC meeting, a commission official said Tuesday. One such item is a rulemaking asking how to implement the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008, signed last month by President Bush. The other item seeks comment on ways to improve management and administration of the Universal Service Fund. The USF item responds to a GAO audit citing concerns about waste, fraud and abuse, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters earlier this month (CD Aug 5 p1).
The FCC should use phone numbers for Universal Service Fund contribution, said the USF by the Numbers Coalition. Members from AT&T, Verizon, CTIA, USTelecom and IDT met last week with Amy Bender, aide to Chairman Kevin Martin. Group members not represented at the meeting are NCTA, GCI, Megapath and the VON Coalition. The FCC assesses USF contributions based on a carrier’s interstate revenue. The coalition wants contributions based on how many phone numbers a carrier owns. That would be easier, provide certainty to consumers and stabilize USF funding, said the coalition.
The FCC will reform intercarrier compensation and the Universal Service Fund together, perhaps this year, Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president, told reporters Thursday. “If [reform is] going to happen, it’s going to happen in a package,” Tauke said. Two months ago, he doubted intercarrier reform could happen this year, he said. Taking compensation together with USF distribution and contribution is “a lot to swallow,” but court pressure and growing industry consensus makes him optimistic, Tauke said. Now is the “last best chance” for the telecom and technology sector to ally and reform an “unsustainable” system, he said.
An FCC order preempting states from imposing traditional phone regulation on Vonage VoIP services didn’t keep Nebraska from assessing state universal service fees on Vonage’s interconnected VoIP, the FCC told a federal appeals court. In a late-filed friend-of-the-court brief to the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis, the FCC said Tuesday that a federal trial court wrongly concluded that the FCC barred Nebraska from enforcing state universal service requirements on Vonage.
The FCC shouldn’t apply an interim cap on the Universal Service Fund high-cost program until it weighs a petition for reconsideration (CD Aug 5 p3) by the Rural Cellular Association and a group of small wireless competitive eligible telecommunications carriers, said the RCA. The RCA sought a stay late Monday, after filing the reconsideration petition Friday, when the interim cap took effect. The wireless CETC group could go to court. Under court rules, the group may file for court relief if the FCC denies the stay, doesn’t act on the motion for stay or denies the reconsideration petition. “If and when this matter reaches a circuit court of appeals,” the RCA said, “the court undoubtedly will have before it data from USAC showing what the Commission’s CETC-only cap actually saved the USF.” If the data show savings below 1 percent “as it does now,” the interim cap “will be greeted by judicial skepticism at best.”
The Rural Cellular Association formally challenged an FCC interim cap on the Universal Service Fund high-cost program, filing a reconsideration petition over the weekend. The group was expected to file a motion for stay on Monday, but hadn’t at our deadline. The reconsideration petition also was signed by small wireless competitive eligible telecommunications carriers. “The high-cost fund ‘emergency’ alleged by the commission is a farce,” said RCA Executive Director Eric Peterson. “The decision to implement the cap is based on inaccurate facts, false assumptions, flawed legal reasoning and ignores Congressional direction and the principle of competitive neutrality.”
AT&T, Alltel, Verizon are among 24 companies questioned on how they spend high-cost universal service fund subsidies, the House Oversight Committee said Monday. The fund needs more oversight, chairman Henry Waxman, D-California, told committee members in a memo Monday. He called that goal consistent with the committee’s “strong interest” in ensuring private sector and government accountability. The committee worries about the size and growth of subsidies, which the FCC said exceeded $6 billion total 2006 to 2008.
PORTLAND, Ore. State regulators Wednesday called for a joint federal-state task force to develop national wireless consumer protection standards enforced by a partnership of federal and state authorities. The resolution, adopted by the board of the National Association of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners, marks a major change in NARUC policy.
SES Americom agreed to continue serving the Navajo Nation until Aug. 1, an SES spokesman told us Tuesday. SES had planned to cut off service to the Navajo Nation on Tuesday (CD July 22 p14), but was persuaded by the FCC to continue serving the tribe, the spokesman said. “The FCC suggested we could be flexible once again,” he said, noting that SES extended service past the end of its contract with OnSat.