Affordability, PC ownership issues and lack of broadband content are barriers for broadband adoption among low-income families, children and others, panelists said at the FCC Broadband Workshop late Wednesday.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Thursday that he will seek a vote by the commissioners on the national broadband plan before it’s sent to Congress. His comment came in an interview in his corner office, still little decorated, on the FCC’s eighth floor. It had been unclear whether the other commissioners would be asked to sign off on the plan or whether it would in effect be released as a chairman’s report. Genachowski also said providing Universal Service Fund support for broadband should be a top FCC priority.
The Universal Service Administrative Co. asked the FCC Wireline Bureau for guidance on USF caps for AT&T and Alltel, plus five other matters. In a letter Wednesday, requested by the bureau, USAC asked whether caps specific to AT&T and Alltel should have applied before the industrywide interim cap on USF high-cost support took effect. USAC believes that it’s required to carry out the caps from their effective date until they were “superseded” by the industry cap, “because the CETC industry-wide cap was effective prospectively and did not state that it superseded the company-specific caps retroactive.” But “at the written direction of Commission staff,” USAC said, it didn’t enforce the caps specific to the carriers, it said. “If USAC were to implement the company specific caps for AT&T and Alltel, significant amounts of funding previously disbursed would be recovered from each carrier.” USAC also asked for guidance on how to deal with carriers that didn’t maintain records for audit periods falling before an FCC rule on documentation for the high-cost program took effect 2008. The rule required carriers to keep funding receipts five years. USAC said the commission’s guidance would affect about 100 audits. “The potential recovery of support paid to beneficiaries is significant, if the support is deemed improper and recoverable due to carrier failure to comply” with document retention rules, it said. And USAC asked for clarifications on several issues related to reporting and classification of income tax and various types of revenue. FCC guidance would affect the amount of money carriers contribute to the USF and receive from it.
OPASTCO Chairman Mark Gailey, the president of Totah Communications, a small, family-owned phone company in rural Oklahoma and Kansas, called preserving the Universal Service Fund critical to small carriers’ ability to provide broadband services. He testified Tuesday at an FCC broadband workshop along with representatives of other rural organizations and of small business and minority groups.
The FCC Wireline Bureau rejected requests by Global Crossing for review of a February 2007 audit by the Universal Service Administrative Co. Global Crossing was found to have incorrectly reported -- as carrier’s carrier revenue instead of end-user revenue on which the company’s USF contribution assessments are based -- 2004 payments by customers that didn’t contribute to the Universal Service Fund. “The record does not support Global Crossing’s contention that it reasonably expected these customers to directly contribute to the universal service fund as resellers, and therefore we find that USAC’s assessment of contributions on Global Crossing based on revenue from these non-contributing customers was proper,” the bureau said.
The FCC Wireline Bureau granted a request by TeleQuality Communications to waive a commission rule regarding timing of reimbursement for services provided under the universal service rural health-care program. The rule requires waiting until the annual true-up before disbursement of rural health care program dollars. The bureau said there’s good cause to waive the rule, because otherwise TeleQuality won’t be able to sustain operations and provide discounted telecom service to its rural healthcare customers. The bureau told the Universal Service Administrative Co. to make an initial reimbursement payment within 10 days without deducting any USF contributions owed by TeleQuality, and to make any additional payments every two months.
Industry executives and others sought new broadband pricing, spectrum and subsidy program policy, at an FCC broadband workshop late Wednesday. Better access to spectrum, capital and network backbone are among the biggest needs in reaching the unserved and underserved, they said.
The FCC wants comment on a petition by Nebraska and Kansas regulators (CD July 21 p4) for the commission to declare that it never preempted states from charging universal service fees to interconnected VoIP providers on intrastate traffic. The states also asked the FCC to declare that individual states may impose the charges in any way that doesn’t apply to interstate revenue and that ensure no provider pays more than one state for the same intrastate revenue. The states said the FCC could open a rulemaking to decide the matter. Comments are due Sept. 9, replies Sept. 24. In an ex parte meeting last week with FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick, Vonage said the FCC “is free to revisit its decision to pre-empt state imposition of USF” by opening a rulemaking. The VoIP provider said the FCC’s 2004 Vonage pre-emption order said clearly that states can’t impose state USF obligations on the company. Vonage said it doesn’t object to contributing to a state USF, if the requirement applies only going forward. A rulemaking “would be the most legally defensible and equitable response” to the states’ petition: “Opening a rulemaking and inviting comment from all interested parties, including other state public utility commissions, will enable the Commission to offer uniform guidance and ensure that all states have the opportunity to adopt interconnected VoIP USF contribution requirements that do not conflict with federal policy.” A rulemaking could also prevent conflicts when the FCC overhauls the federal USF, it said.
State consumer advocates denounced a Qwest filing on universal service rules for nonrural carriers as “seriously incomplete” and filled with errors. In 2005, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the FCC to revamp rules on carriers like Qwest that serve high-cost areas but have too many lines to be considered “rural” by the statutory definition (CD May 12 p3). In an ex parte filing last week, the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates said the FCC should reject Qwest’s proposal for handling the court remand. A July ex parte by the carrier failed to mention much of the USF support it receives in other ways or that its plan would increase the high-cost fund by $1.2 billion, the association said.
Eliminating telephone excise and Universal Service Fund taxes are options that the Congressional Budget Office suggests lawmakers consider as they works on future federal budgets, a new report said. The options are two of 188 in a report sent to the House and Senate Budget Committees last week to help Congress set priorities in its annual budgets, said CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf. The ideas in the report aren’t recommendations and they aren’t given in order of priority, he said in the report’s preface.