A state court required the Texas Public Utility Commission to pay AMA TechTel Communications the full amount of state USF supports it was owed since Dec. 1. In a Thursday order in case 03-021-00597-CV, 3rd District Texas Court of Appeals in Austin judges decided 2-1 to lift a suspension of a lower court order requiring the payments. The appeals court had frozen the requirement with the appeal pending (see 2112150042). AMA filed a motion May 26 saying that, without the funding, it would go out of business before the appeal could be resolved. “AMA has demonstrated that irreparable harm has occurred and continues to occur,” said the appeals court: Reinstating the lower court’s temporary injunction will “preserve the parties’ rights until the disposition of this appeal.” Justices Thomas Baker and Gisela Triana supported the decision; Justice Melissa Goodwin dissented. The AMA case is one of two court challenges involving the PUC’s 2020 decision not to raise the surcharge on consumer bills to fully fund USF. The Texas PUC is "reviewing the court’s order," a spokesperson said.
Arizona Corporation Commission members raised questions Tuesday about Frontier Communications’ urgency in responding to a June 11 fiber cut and other network outages. Frontier officials at the livestreamed ACC meeting defended the company’s speed responding to the June 11 outage, which the company blamed on gunshots by a possible saboteur (see 2206270029). Commissioners and local officials want more network redundancy to prevent future problems.
Gunshots damaged Frontier Communications fiber and caused an Arizona outage June 11, the company told the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) in a Friday letter in docket T-02115A-21-0198. “The incident that impacted Frontier's Internet and Verizon's wireless service in Navajo and Apache Counties on June 11 was the direct result of an intentional criminal attack on Frontier's fiber optic facilities executed in a manner to cause an extended disruption to services," the carrier said. “The perpetrator or perpetrators must be brought to justice.” Frontier disagreed with the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, which filed a June 20 letter that referred to the outage as a network failure. “Gunshot blasts damaged Frontier's fiber cable on a route between Holbrook and Snowflake, Arizona, in multiple locations, over a three-mile area. The pattern of damage indicates that this was neither a network ‘failure’ nor a foolish incident of vandalism.” Frontier urged the commission to consider increasing the state 911 surcharge or repurpose state USF for increasing network redundancy in rural areas. The ACC plans to consider the Frontier outage docket and possible state USF changes at its Tuesday meeting, said an agenda.
Competitive Carriers Association representatives raised concerns about “the potential for a serious ‘5G Gap’ that may disproportionately harm rural wireless carriers and consumers,” in a call with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “The risk of a 5G Gap is growing due to the confluence of developments such as underfunding for the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program and the heavy fiber focus of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 21-476. CCA urged the FCC to emphasize the importance of 5G in an upcoming report to Congress on the USF. “Many parts of the United States, especially rural America, are at risk of being left behind,” the group said.
The House Appropriations Committee expects the FCC to "take further action to help eliminate the potential for future interagency spectrum disputes" beyond a coordination agreement between commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson (see 2202150001), the panel said in a report accompanying the Financial Services Subcommittee's FY 2023 bill. The underlying measure (see 2203280069), set for a Friday committee vote, would give the FCC $390 million, up 2.3% from what Congress appropriated in the FY 2022 omnibus appropriations package President Joe Biden signed in March (see 2203150076). The bill would give the FTC $490 million in FY23, up 30% from FY22. The markup begins at 9 a.m. in 1100 Longworth.
USTelecom, NTCA and the Competitive Carriers Association defended a directive in Section 254 of the Telecom Act that the FCC preserve and advance universal service, in a pleading Friday in response to a challenge by Consumers’ Research to the broader USF program (see 2110050056). “Under the Supreme Court’s approach for reviewing nondelegation challenges, Section 254 falls well within constitutional bounds,” the groups told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: “Section 254 prescribes far more detailed directions than other statutes that have repeatedly been upheld by the Supreme Court over the past century. Even under a more searching standard -- which could be adopted only by the Supreme Court -- Section 254 still would pass constitutional muster.”
The FCC should consider requiring "large edge companies" to contribute to the Universal Service Fund, Joan Marsh, AT&T executive vice president-federal regulatory relations, blogged Friday. "If we want the USF to have a strong broadband future, it's time to ask these entities to contribute to the support of our collective universal broadband goals, Marsh wrote, saying the FCC shouldn't stop at including only broadband internet access service providers. Marsh said the FCC's recent announcement that the USF Q3 contribution factor will be 33% is a "dramatic increase" from the previous quarter and the factor will continue to grow as revenue declines (see 2206100058).
The Supreme Court appeared to raise questions about the future of the Chevron doctrine Wednesday, under which agencies like the FCC and FTC are afforded deference by the courts in their decisions as expert agencies. The unanimous court ruled in American Hospital Assn. v. Becerra that the Department of Health and Human Service’s decision to reduce yearly Medicare payments to hospitals as part of the 340B program was unlawful. The government raised Chevron deference, but the decision by Justice Brett Kavanaugh never addresses the doctrine. The case had been decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
House Communications Subcommittee leaders said Wednesday they’re eyeing combining the Extending America’s Spectrum Auction Leadership Act (HR-7783) and revised versions of the Simplifying Management, Reallocation and Transfer of Spectrum Act (HR-5486) and Spectrum Innovation Act (HR-7624) before a full Commerce Committee vote. The subpanel unanimously advanced HR-5486, HR-7624, HR-7783 and four other telecom bills Wednesday, as expected (see 2206140077).
Alaska’s attorney general supported connections-based contribution and assessing broadband services for Alaska USF. Assessing fees by connection is more sustainable, the AG’s Regulatory Affairs and Public Advocacy (RAPA) division said in comments received Monday by the Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA). “It is fair and reasonable to require broadband Internet connections to support the network that allows carriers to provide that specific service,” RAPA said in the RCA's USF review in docket R-21-001 (see 2205160022). Associations that filed competing AUSF revamp plans supported connections-based contribution. Matanuska Telecom Association (MTA) called its plan a “simple and immediate solution,” while “time is simply running out for the Commission to vet and implement the complicated, still conceptual proposals” from staff and the Alaska Remote Carrier Coalition. ARCC said the MTA proposal “makes only minor changes to the status quo and thus ignores the greatest need" in Alaska, "the off-road network remote villages.” ARCC agreed the RCA should adopt a connections-based method and supported assessing broadband. Federal infrastructure dollars are meant to supplement but not replace state funding, ARCC said. Alaska Communications supported a voice connections-based method. GCI isn’t sure what to do about AUSF, it said. “While GCI is very much open to continuation of an appropriate AUSF, GCI does not believe that a record has yet been developed to support any specific proposal. With federal funding on the way, “now is not a prudent time for the Commission to expand or repurpose the AUSF for broadband,” said CTIA: Changing to connections-based contribution “would worsen, not improve, the impact of the economic burden on hardworking Alaskans by making the assessment more regressive, hitting low-income and low-volume users hardest, and shifting the overall burden away from business customers and towards residential users."