All federal universal service support payments must be made by electronics funds transfer, the FCC said Friday. USF recipients should provide their financial information on FCC Form 498. The requirement will become effective this fall when the FCC releases a revised form, it said. “Eliminating the mailing of paper checks will minimize the possibility that payments are lost in transit or delivered to the wrong addresses, and reduce the chance that payments are misappropriated,” the FCC said.
Collecting and sorting broadband data, including on pricing, speeds, competition and availability, will be one of the greatest challenges for the FCC in the next five months, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said at the Media and Technology Institute Policy Forum, held Monday by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Broadband adoption is as important as deployment, she said, adding that she will be doing community outreach on issues with adoption, particularly in disadvantaged communities. Clyburn said she will be talking to “real consumers” and work on community outreach projects, adding that many broadband solutions could be found through community outreach efforts. Consumer’s choice to engage with technology is a critical, and affordability and availability are only some of the barriers of adoption, Clyburn said. Helping people realize the relevance of technology to daily lives is important, she said. Extending broadband infrastructure to everyone and solving deployment challenges aren’t enough, she said. Many are not making broadband a priority and “my goal is to understand why,” Clyburn said. One-size-fits-all isn’t the solution for adoption issues, she said, saying listening and learning are key. Meanwhile, “we need to find ways to encourage broadband investments” and more USF portions for broadband, Clyburn said. A successful national broadband plan can only be created after understanding consumers’ mind set, she said. The Joint Center is working on broadband data, the implications of social networking tools on African American communities and other minority communities and partnering with organizations across the nation and working with local elected officials on issues including broadband adoption, said Nicol Turner-Lee, vice president at the center.
Companies should have to provide broadband as a precondition to receiving universal service funding, said Public Knowledge. In a meeting with FCC broadband plan coordinator Blair Levin, the group said the rule “would be phased in over a number of years, and would allow USF money to be used to help pay for the necessary infrastructure upgrades,” according to an ex parte. Also, Public Knowledge urged the FCC to map existing government fiber assets, and ask Congress to “remove any existing legal barriers to such a mapping.”
Government support is necessary to deliver broadband to all Americans due to the cost of building broadband infrastructure in rural areas, a white paper by consulting firm McLean & Brown said. Rural broadband service providers depend heavily on a combination of explicit support provided by the Universal Service Fund and implicit support through intercarrier compensation, it said. But the current USF and ICC regimes are based on voice-service metrics that aren’t sustainable in an increasingly broadband world, it said, urging “fundamental reforms.” Without them, rural carriers will face financial collapse, it warned. Meanwhile, the historical dichotomy between “telecom service” and “information service” is no longer necessary and is inconsistent with the evolution and growth of broadband services, the consultant said. Wireless networks lack the speed and throughput capacity to fully or economically replace rural wireline networks as an “important rural broadband delivery vehicle,” it said.
Donald Evans, counsel to Corr Wireless, met with aides to Commissioners Michael Copps, Robert McDowell and Mignon Clyburn to discuss universal service issues of interest to competitive eligible telecommunications carriers. “I emphasized the importance of those funds to smaller CETCs in support of their universal service obligations, especially in light of the limiting effect of the interim cap on funds available for this purpose, and the benefits of dealing with this appeal discretely and apart from the broader issues of USF reform,” Evans said.
The Universal Service Administrative Co. won’t accept USF high-cost and low-income forms at its New Jersey mailing address after Dec. 31, USAC said Tuesday. Starting Oct. 1, eligible telecom carriers should mail to USAC’s Washington, D.C., office FCC Forms 497, 507, 508, 509 and 525; local switching support forms; interstate access support line count filings, CMT revenue filings; and any other information previously sent to New Jersey. E-mail and fax numbers remain unchanged. USAC recommended filing FCC Forms 497 and 525 online, “to avoid interruption in form processing.”
Carriers would have to pay 12.3 percent of their long-distance revenue to the Universal Service Fund in the fourth quarter, if the FCC adopts the contribution factor proposed Monday. The figure is 0.6 percentage points less than this quarter’s 12.9 percent, a record-setting figure that elicited alarm and outrage (CD July 31 p5) from state consumer advocates and carriers advocating USF reform. The Universal Service Administrative Co. said it would need to collect $1.86 billion from carriers in Q4. To set the carrier “contribution factor,” the commission divides the amount needed by projected carrier revenue. Of $2 billion in anticipated USF support, about $1.15 billion is projected for the rural high-cost program, $542.2 million for the E-rate program, $261.7 million for low-income support and $53.4 million for the rural health-care program.
Interconnected VoIP providers should be required to pay state universal service fees, said states and rural wireline carriers in comments filed at the FCC Wednesday on a petition by the Nebraska Public Service Commission and Kansas Corporation Commission (CD Sept 4 p6). But Verizon and Google fought the concept of VoIP having an intrastate component subject to state jurisdiction. Vonage and some other VoIP providers didn’t object to paying state USF, but said the FCC must open a separate rulemaking first.
NTIA and RUS unveiled a new searchable database late Wednesday that provides public information on broadband grant applications. The database is intended to provide “a useful tool for the public that will provide transparency” while highlighting the benefits of projects, applicants were told in a recent e-mail. The database is searchable by organization, keywords, project type, program and state. Search results additionally list applicant contact information, project title, grant money requested and a project description. Those who want to protect proprietary information have until Monday to provide a redacted copy of their executive summary.
The FCC should rule that the Universal Service Administrative Co. can’t “indirectly” impose USF fees on international-only long-distance providers, said the Ad Hoc Coalition of International Telecommunications Companies. The commission also should rule that it lacks jurisdiction to impose USF obligations on those from outside the U.S., it said. In a petition last week, the coalition said foreign providers are exempt from paying USF, but often face indirect USF obligations resulting from pass-through charges from their underlying carriers. USAC’s fee assessments are “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to federal law,” and the commission’s “sanctioning of USAC’s actions is inexcusable,” the coalition said. If the FCC decides not to issue a declaratory ruling, it should open an investigation of the matter, the group said.