The National Broadband Plan offers recommendations for increasing broadband adoption without increasing the Universal Service Fund and without new legislation, an FCC official said during a webinar. “We didn’t want to throw everything back into the lap of Congress,” said Wireline Deputy Bureau Chief Carol Mattey. Congress is providing insight and holding oversight hearings, “but we started off with basic design principles for reform that we can take care of ourselves,” she said. Goals of the plan include leading the world in mobile innovation, providing 1 Gbps access to anchor institutions in every community and supplying first responders a nationwide wireless broadband network, said Jon Banks, USTelecom senior vice president of law and policy. The commission also recommends establishing competition policies and creating incentives for universal availability and adoption. “Telecom companies tend to pay the highest rate for pole attachments,” he said. “The FCC is looking to drive down the cost of that part of broadband infrastructure.” As part of a USF and intercarrier compensation overhaul, the FCC plans to transform the high-cost program into the Connect America Fund in a three phase process over the next 10 years, Mattey said (CD March 8 p1). The overhaul will involve dispensing with per-minute intercarrier-compensation charges, said Rebekah Goodheart, an FCC policy adviser.
The National Broadband Plan sets the stage for increased broadband adoption, but hasn’t quelled the debate over Universal Service Fund, spectrum use and Title II reclassification, telecom officials said on panels Tuesday. The spectrum portion of the plan “really does push the ball forward to try to get more flexible use for spectrum,” said Gregory Rosston, deputy director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Spectrum is the “mother’s milk” of wireless, said Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke. The recommendations get the ball moving “in the development of additional spectrum resources for wireless. That’s a big positive for investment and innovation,” he said the event, held at the National Press Club.
A Universal Service Fund revamp passed by Congress would do more than an FCC overhaul of the fund, and would leapfrog possible limits to the commission’s legal authority, said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., at a National Journal event Tuesday on Capitol Hill. The National Broadband Plan suggests an overhaul that wouldn’t require legislation. A USF bill may be passable on a bipartisan basis, said Ranking Member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla. Both legislators reaffirmed support for the FCC plan, but Stearns said he has concerns about how the FCC sees its role in spurring the marketplace.
Passage of health care reform legislation over the weekend frees Congress to finish the oft-delayed satellite TV reauthorization and may also loosen bottlenecks that held back other legislation, industry officials said Monday. But Congress won’t necessarily intensify telecom legislation efforts, they said. An ongoing debate among Hill leadership is whether, in the wake of passing health care, they should lay low or come out swinging, said an industry lobbyist.
Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said Thursday he’s “sort of relieved” that the National Broadband Plan doesn’t discuss extensively imposing net neutrality rules and invoking Title II to regulate the Internet. The broadband plan “has a lot of worthwhile things in it,” Stearns, the House Communications Subcommittee’s ranking member, said on an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators recorded to telecast Saturday. The plan sets good goals that could be achieved by the market without government intervention, he said. Stearns said he supports shifting USF to support broadband, but he doesn’t support “spending a lot of government money.” He criticized the broadband stimulus for funding projects for underserved people rather than just for unserved ones. Stearns also worries that the plan could lead to new unbundling mandates, which he said could punish companies that build infrastructure. Also on the show, Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., of the House Communications Subcommittee said he believes Congress can act on the National Broadband Plan’s recommendation that the government find $16 billion for a nationwide public safety network. “As difficult as it is to obtain appropriations these days for new projects, this is an area where we can obtain bipartisan cooperation and a bipartisan commitment to provide the critical funding that is necessary” to help public safety. On spectrum, Boucher said he hopes to get his inventory legislation “through the House of Representatives within the course of this month.” The House Commerce Committee approved the bill this month, and a similar bill awaits Senate votes. Boucher called a recommendation in the plan to set up a low-cost, ad-supported wireless broadband network a “good idea,” but he said he’s “not sure the federal government has any role in either mandating or supervising that.” Stearns said he has mixed feelings about the idea, because he believes prices will naturally come down without government intervention. FCC commissioners will take questions from Boucher’s and Stearns’ committee at a hearing Thursday.
People seem to “get” that the National Broadband Plan is a “call to action,” said FCC broadband plan Executive Director Blair Levin at a Brookings Institution event Wednesday. The team set out to write a document that was both “visionary and practical,” and “the kind of advice companies would get if they had millions of dollars on the line,” he said. Levin believes the FCC achieved that. Everyone who’s reacted to the plan likes “large pieces” of it, which is good because Levin hoped people would love 80 percent, be indifferent to 10 percent and hate 10 percent, he said. Relatively little has been said about the national purposes section of the report, he said, but Levin expects that part will have the most material impact 10 years from now. Quick action is most likely to occur on recommendations the team made to the FCC, said Levin. “On the key issues affecting the FCC -- USF and intercarrier [compensation] -- there was a fair amount of acceptance of the need to go forward and that there is a framework now to go forward.” And President Barack Obama has explicitly supported the FCC’s proposals on spectrum and public safety, he said. “Congressional action [is] always more difficult to predict,” but the team “designed the plan so that the core recommendations could be done without Congress for the most part,” Levin said. Broadband Plan General Manager Erik Garr hopes the level of discussion on facts and outcomes at the commission continues. He described the broadband plan proceeding as “the most open and transparent planning process we could physically do.” The team “wanted to walk the walk” and be an example of an effective open government, said Phoebe Yang, general counsel for the team. The team worked nonstop until the end, said Levin. “For the last 75 days, the four of us have pretty much worked every single day.”
Meeting Universal Service Fund payment obligations, adhering to the customer proprietary network information (CPNI) rules, and primary jurisdiction referrals are the most daunting enforcement issues for competitive local exchange carriers, lawyers said at a CompTel regulatory workshop. In the collection of USF contributions, the “USAC’s (Universal Service Administrative Company) tactics can be extremely heavy-handed and unfair to carriers,” said Jon Canis of Arent Fox. He called the company a “rogue agency” and said personnel “act in ways that they know to be illegal.” USAC concentrates on collecting as much USF as it can and it generates fines, he said. “Even if you can demonstrate you were acting in good faith, even though you can demonstrate that you did everything possible to comply and everything possible to remediate as soon as you could, it doesn’t matter.” Arent Fox lawyers advised that any CLEC set up a “detailed, documented and consistently applied method of computing USF payment obligations.” Canis also cautioned the telcos about CPNI reporting requirements. The way the FCC handles the requirements “is a regulatory game designed exclusively to extract revenues from victimized CLECs,” he said. In 2008, more than 600 carriers received notices of apparent liability for failing to send compliance letters by the deadline of March 1, Canis said. The action was meant to “demonstrate toughness of FCC enforcement and generate payment of fines,” he said. Some cases in which CLECs are seeking unpaid access charges have been held up awaiting referrals to the FCC, Arent Fox said. Several cases have been pending more than three years.
The FCC approved Tuesday by a unanimous vote a brief statement of principles on broadband. FCC Republicans Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker were sharply critical of some aspects of the plan itself, which was not put up for a vote before being submitted to Congress. Both found lots to like in the plan but said it must not be used as a lever for imposing more regulation. Agency officials said the FCC will offer a list in coming days of more than 40 rulemakings that will be begun as a follow-up to the plan.
Some members of Congress may be wary of spending additional money on broadband, said Republican aides at a Broadband Breakfast event Tuesday morning. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan asks Congress for $16 billion for a national public-safety network and $9 billion for a new Universal Service Fund emphasizing high-speed access. Aides from both parties called the plan a step toward broadband for all.
House Democrats endorsed the FCC’s National Broadband Plan a day before its official release. House Republicans gave conditional praise, saying they're watching closely. In an interview, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he believes legislation will be required to satisfy the plan’s recommendations to revamp the Universal Service Fund, build a public safety wireless network, and identify lightly used spectrum.