Competitive Carriers Association President Steve Berry and others from CCA met with Jon Wilkins, FCC managing director and soon-to-be Wireless Bureau chief, to discuss issues most important to small carriers, said a filing posted Wednesday in FCC docket 10-208. Top among CCA’s issues is USF reform and the launch of Mobility Fund Phase II “or another ongoing support program,” CCA said. “CCA will continue to collaborate with the Bureau to further develop its Mobility Fund II proposal.” It called on the agency to distribute $73 million left over from the first mobility fund. Just as important, CCA said, is access to spectrum. CCA reiterated its support for requiring broadcasters to move within 39 months of the TV incentive auction. “Likewise, it is increasingly difficult for competitive carriers to get access to additional low-band spectrum through secondary market transactions,” CCA said.
CenturyLink and Frontier Communications asked the FCC to allocate $176 million in interim USF support to price-cap incumbent telcos providing voice service in costly remote areas where they are no longer being subsidized. “This support would flow for a maximum of two years, and likely less,” the two ILECs said in a filing, posted Wednesday in docket 10-90, summarizing recent meetings with aides to all five commissioners and a senior Wireline Bureau official. The telcos said the support is needed to ensure voice service continuity “in extremely high-cost and other unfunded locations” of territories served by price-cap carriers in states where they accepted new Connect America Fund Phase II support. Those areas constitute about 6 percent of the census blocks carriers serve in those states, the telcos said. In those areas, they said, the incumbents aren't receiving either the CAF II broadband-oriented support or legacy USF phone support but still must continue to offer voice service under FCC rules. Carriers have complained of an unfunded mandate (see 1601220046). CenturyLink and Frontier noted that the FCC plans to deal with the costs to serve areas either through an interim CAF II subsidy reverse auction or a remote areas fund (RAF), neither of which has been set up. “In the interim, however, restoring the inevitable voice service disruptions in unfunded areas presents a significant universal service challenge. Price cap ILECs that accepted offers of model-based CAF Phase II support are obligated to use such support to deploy broadband to covered locations; they cannot shift these monies to support voice service in the unfunded areas,” said the two telcos, which noted the ILECs must invest “significant amounts” to provide broadband in areas where they accepted CAF II money. They said the proposed interim funding should be based on previous legacy "frozen support" for the unfunded areas, as determined by the cost model. It would last only until the end of the CAF II auction process and could be drawn from the $100 million per year budgeted for the RAF and a “tiny fraction of the existing CAF reserve amount” held by the Universal Service Administrative Co., they said.
State and federal regulators need to be focused on making broadband work, experts said during a National Regulatory Research Institute webinar Wednesday. The NRRI event expanded on a panel -- with the same participants -- held at a NARUC meeting in Washington last week (see 1602160004).
The FCC should consider Lifeline USF changes to "allow for subsidy aggregation to support ongoing efforts to bring fast and affordable broadband to public housing residents," New York City officials said in a meeting with staffers for Commissioner Mignon Clyburn summarized in a filing Friday in FCC docket 11-42. The NYC officials shared details of a recent trip to learn more about "Philadelphia's efforts to win unprecedented concessions from Comcast to support low income families," the filing said. They also highlighted "the importance of Wi-Fi networks" to the city's connectivity efforts and updated the status of a franchise contract proposal, "from negotiations with cable providers to efforts to convert payphones on City property to payphone and wi-fi facilities." The NYC officials "voiced strong support" for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal "to unlock the set top box market to give consumers more choice by allowing for competition," the filing said. The city officials also met with Gigi Sohn and another aide to Wheeler and with Wireline Bureau staff, other filings said (see here and here).
NARUC opposed any Lifeline USF changes that would usurp state regulators' role in designating eligible telecom carrier (ETCs) participation in the program subsidizing low-income telecom service. NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay met with FCC officials recently to discuss proposals by others that the agency give Lifeline USF support to non-ETCs, establish a federal designation process that bypasses state ETC designations in the first instance, or fund broadband without requiring carriers to provide voice service. “The impetus for this seems to be the misguided notion that, by cutting States out of the process, it will somehow encourage cable providers of broadband services to focus on providing facilities-based lifeline service at a discounted rate very close to the current lifeline subsidy rate,” Ramsay said in a filing posted Friday in docket 11-42. He said the Communications Act doesn't allow the FCC to: create a federal ETC designation process bypassing state commissions from the beginning, give funds to entities that aren’t telecom service providers and are ETCs, or give subsidies to carriers that don’t offer all designated support services. He said Section 214(e) makes “crystal clear” that states are to designate carriers as ETCs before they can receive USF support and that the FCC has no ETC role unless the state can't act due to state law. He also said the proposals were bad policy because they would: take “state cops off the beat” and thus lead to more Lifeline fraud and abuse; undermine other state efforts to promote service to low-income consumers; seem unlikely to succeed in getting cable and others to provide Lifeline service; and “certainly will undermine the program’s service quality.” AT&T, Comcast, Public Knowledge and others have urged eliminating or streamlining Lifeline ETC designation requirements. Ramsay met with aides to all four regular FCC commissioners or gave them copies of the filing. He also met with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's counselor Gigi Sohn, incoming Wireless Bureau Chief Jon Wilkins, Wireline Bureau Telecom Access Policy Division Chief Ryan Palmer and Eric Feigenbaum of the Office of Media Relations. Some lobbying was during NARUC's meetings last week in Washington, where a resolution was adopted on Lifeline (see 1602150004).
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler hailed a "bipartisan" draft rural USF order aimed at modernizing high-cost support mechanisms for rate-of-return carriers by shifting to a broadband focus. Wheeler said in a Friday blog post that he and Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Mignon Clyburn agreed on principles for reforming the subsidy program and boosting broadband deployment to unserved rural Americans
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he’s “working hard” on Lifeline USF modernization with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and hopes to bring an order forward quickly, but he declined to discuss any details at his press conference after the commission meeting Thursday. Wheeler has said he and Clyburn agree Lifeline support rules should be overhauled to cover broadband and further combat abuse and fraud, goals that fellow Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel endorsed (see 1602050066). Clyburn has said the FCC plans to act on Lifeline this quarter and informed sources say the agency might vote on an item at its March 31 meeting. The FCC Thursday released a Lifeline recommendation unanimously approved Feb. 5 by its Consumer Advisory Committee. The panel recommended: Lifeline not be subjected to a “spending cap or restrictive budget” that curtails service to eligible low-income consumers; eligibility verification be handled by “third party administrator(s)”; the FCC “promote competition and ensure robust consumer choice,” including for persons with disabilities; and the commission “improve Lifeline enrollment and outreach through collaboration with community based organizations and anchor institutions and coordination with the federal anti-poverty programs including establishment of automated enrollment procedures, with priority attention paid to the programs conferring Lifeline eligibility.” Free Press and New America’s Open Technology Institute also urged FCC officials not to impose a spending cap or a budget and supported implementing minimum service standards, said a Free Press filing posted Wednesday in docket 11-42. Noting calls to expand the scope of Lifeline providers beyond eligible telecom carriers, the groups also suggested the FCC could make the ETC definition more inclusive rather than depart from the ETC process. The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council backed eliminating or streamlining the ETC process for Lifeline to increase market competition in the program, said a filing by the group summarizing meetings at the agency. In a letter, the National Tribal Telecommunications Association urged the FCC to keep and increase the enhanced tribal Lifeline credit. The Federal Register published an FCC notice saying the Office of Management and Budget approved for three years the information-collection requirements in a June order making some Lifeline administrative changes (see 1506180029).
A draft FCC order to revamp rural carrier USF mechanisms is circulating, commission officials confirmed Wednesday, declining to offer details. The draft order had been expected as some stakeholders made progress toward an agreement with key commission officials (see 1602040055 and 1602080050). FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Mike O'Rielly have been consulting with rural telco groups on making broadband-oriented changes to update legacy rate-of-return USF mechanisms and provide carriers with a new alternative based on a cost model.
The FCC is addressing universal service accounting issues, Chief Financial Officer Mark Stephens said in the agency's FY 2015 Summary of Performance & Financial Information released Tuesday. An independent auditor in FY 2014 identified a "continuing material weakness in the control environment over USF budgetary accounting," Stephens said. He said that material weakness resulted from the USF budgetary activities of the Universal Service Administrative Co. "The accounting errors that the auditors noted above were corrected by USAC and the FCC and do not affect the Commission’s FY 2015 financial statements," Stephens said. "However, the auditors noted that corrections need to be made to USAC’s processes and internal controls to avoid these types of errors from recurring in the future. The FCC will work with USAC to ensure that USAC takes the proper corrective action to resolve these recommendations and strengthen its internal controls." He also said the FCC was "committed to remediating information technology control deficiencies" and was moving to address a "noncompliance" finding about the Debt Collection Improvement Act.
The FCC improved administrative efficiency and advanced policy goals last year, Chairman Tom Wheeler said in the agency's FY 2015 Annual Performance Report released Thursday. "We are making decisions faster, improving speed of disposal on routine matters, expanding electronic filing and distribution, decreasing backlogs, and improving responsiveness to consumers," Wheeler said. On policy, he said FCC decisions continue to "help American consumers, enhance U.S. competitiveness, and improve our innovation economy." He highlighted FCC actions to make more spectrum available for broadband, uphold net neutrality, revamp USF subsidy mechanisms, approve AT&T's buy of DirecTV with conditions, help the disabled use communications technologies and protect consumers from unwanted phone calls. The report said the commission met its speed of disposal (SOD) goals 98 percent of the time, processing 853,415 applications and complaints in FY 2015. The Office of Engineering and Technology led with a 99.9 percent SOD success rate, followed by the Wireline Bureau at 99.3 percent. Wheeler said the commission adopted an Enforcement Bureau "modernization plan" to concentrate "reduced" resources where they're needed the most, in "areas with the greatest spectrum density." The plan "refocuses field staff on the resolution of public safety and other interference issues. Once implemented, this plan will save millions of dollars annually. We will apply these savings to modernize the equipment used by the field so they can handle the interference issues in the new shared spectrum environment," he said. On the controversial scaling back and closure of Enforcement Bureau field offices, the report said the bureau, Office of Managing Director and "expert outside consultants conducted a thorough, data-driven analysis of the agency’s field operations to maximize the effectiveness of those operations, align them to the overall mission and priorities of the FCC, improve equipment and advanced technologies for field agents, and ensure the most efficient use of the agency’s resources." A Communications Daily Special Report: "Portrait of the FCC in a Partisan Era" said some believe unauthorized "pirate" radio operations are flouting rules because the scaled-back bureau downgraded the importance of such interference enforcement (see 1512150014). As discussed elsewhere in the Special Report (see 1512150040), some bureaus lagged FCC goals by not keeping backlogs low. Last fiscal year, the new report said, the Media Bureau met SOD goals 85 percent of the time, and the International Bureau 76 percent, though the latter's performance was affected by consultations with the executive branch over foreign ownership.