The National Public Safety Telecom Council began a working group to explore questions raised by public safety’s pending loss of the T-band, which was part of the February spectrum law. Public safety got the 700 MHz D-block in the legislation, but had to give up the T-band, heavily used in 11 major metropolitan areas. NPSTC sent out a questionnaire (http://xrl.us/bnkk2a) to gather information as the group prepares a report, targeted for release near the end of the year. Among the major cities where public safety uses the band are Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, New York, Houston and Washington, D.C. The legislation required public safety users to clear the band within nine years so it can be resold in an FCC auction.
Three Alaskan lawmakers urged the FCC to approve a waiver to provide USF funds for a telecom company operating on the remote Adak Island of the Aleutian chain. “Adak is arguably the most remote community in the United States,” and its residents’ dependence on telecommunications is “enormous,” said the letter which was made public last week. Without the support of USF funds, Windy City Cellular, which serves the Adak community, can continue to operate “for only a couple of weeks” and if its service is discontinued the negative impact to the people of Adak “will be most severe,” the letter said. It was signed by Alaskan Sens. Mark Begich, a Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican, and Republican Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs. In June the FCC granted Windy City Cellular limited interim relief of the USF/ICC Transformation Order to provide the company with $40,104 per month for a period of six months beginning in June 2012, or until the commission resolves the company’s pending waiver petition. In the relief order the commission noted that it needed additional time to “compile a full record regarding the nature and level of WCC’s costs” and complete its evaluation of WCC’s petition (http://xrl.us/bnbocq).
The FCC should grant Dell Telephone Cooperative’s petition for waiver of some of the high-cost universal service rules, small telcos told the Wireline Bureau. The Baca Valley telco in Des Moines, and Leaco Rural telco and Peñasco Valley telco in southeast New Mexico, said application of the new rules to Dell would have severe impacts and likely lead to the loss of voice service in the Dell service area. Dell seeks a waiver of the $250 per line per month cap, the rule limiting reimbursable capital and operating expenses applied to high-cost loop support, and rules limiting recovery of corporate operations expenses applied to HCLS and interstate common line support. “Given the dire financial situation facing Dell as a result of the FCC’s USF reform policies and the very real possibility that its customers will lose essential voice service, Leaco supports Dell’s request for waiver,” the telco said (http://xrl.us/bnj78m). “This is no trifling matter,” said Peñasco Valley. “There are scant alternatives for Dell’s customers if it is forced into liquidation,” the telco wrote, noting “several similarities between itself and Dell, both in the challenges of serving a sparsely populated service area in harsh (both geographic and climatic) outside plant conditions, and in the financial harm threatened by the Commission’s new high cost rules” (http://xrl.us/bnj78y).
The FCC committed no errors in dismissing a petition for review of $316,447.38 in USF contributions assessed by the Universal Service Administrative Co. against inContact in January 2009, the commission said in a pleading filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The provider of cloud-based products for corporate call centers later disputed $298,410.50 of the charges, but its complaint was dismissed by the Wireline Bureau. The bureau said inContact had filed its appeal “20 days late.” In June 2010, inContact sought review by the full FCC, which handed down an order in January 2012, upholding the decision by the bureau. InContact sought review by the D.C. Circuit. “The sole issue properly before the Court is whether the Commission abused its discretion when it upheld the Bureau’s dismissal of inContact’s underlying request for review of an action taken by the Administrator because inContact’s request was filed out of time,” the FCC said (http://xrl.us/bnj26p). “The Commission did not abuse its discretion or otherwise act unlawfully when it concluded that inContact’s request had been properly dismissed on procedural grounds. The Commission reasonably determined that the issuance of an invoice by USAC constitutes a ‘decision’ of the Administrator that must be appealed within 60 days. ... Because inContact did not file its request for review until 80 days after issuance of the invoice, it was too late.” The FCC said under case law, “the courts owe substantial deference to an agency’s construction of its own rules."
The FCC Wireline Bureau sought comment on a June 21 petition by UTPhone seeking a waiver of FCC rules limiting Link Up support on tribal lands to eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) receiving USF high-cost support. “UTPhone argues that it is entitled to receive Tribal Link Up support because it is building telecommunications infrastructure on Tribal lands,” the bureau said (http://xrl.us/bnjxqw). Comments are due Sept. 7, replies Sept. 24. “As a small Low Income ETC serving consumers predominantly on Tribal lands in Oklahoma, UTPhone is a local company that has fulfilled the statutory and public interest objectives of the Commission’s Low Income program by filling a valuable niche in offering competitive, high-quality, locally oriented wireline telecommunications services focused specifically on the particular needs and demographics of low income Oklahomans residing on Tribal lands,” the company said in its waiver request (http://xrl.us/bnjxrc). “With its new and growing broadband network infrastructure, UTPhone is now poised to add a high speed broadband service component to its bundle of offerings to these low income consumers who are struggling to move into the Internet age."
Comments filed on USF contribution reform show little agreement and point to the need for more discussion, Verizon and Verizon Wireless said in FCC reply comments. That conclusion was seconded by many companies and groups filing replies this week. Though many suggested short-term fixes, most agreed there is little consensus to move to a numbers-based or connections-based approach.
The FCC should broaden the range of companies paying into the USF so the fund will remain sustainable in the long term, said the NTCA, OPASTCO and Western Telecommunications Alliance in an FCC filing Monday. The groups filed in response to an FCC request for comment on its proposed rule on USF contribution reform (CD April 30 p4). The groups said they support assessing USF fees on text messaging, one-way VoIP calls, retail broadband Internet access and any enterprise communications service that utilizes a telecom component. The FCC should also adopt a “bright line” contributions rule that would determine service-specific designations, the groups said. The commission should continue to levy USF fees based on revenue, and should adopt contributions reform in stages, the groups said. “The Commission should first expeditiously resolve basic approaches and certain major issues that are ripe for action, and do so in the manner as discussed herein,” the groups said. “Following that, it should deal with more complex and less ripe issues at a later date in an ongoing further rulemaking and/or separate clarification orders as the consequences and unresolved issues of the initial reform become more apparent” (http://xrl.us/bnjnf2).
Valley Telephone Cooperative said it’s “deeply concerned about a framework that caps investment in our future rural infrastructure and eliminates reimbursement for expenses already incurred or committed to in order to provide quality, state-of-art technologies to rural businesses and residential customers.” The telco wrote the FCC in support of a petition by Dell Telephone Cooperative for limited waiver of certain high-cost universal service rules, including the cap of $250 per line per month, the rule limiting reimbursable expenses related to high-cost loop support (HCLS), and the extended limits on recovery of corporate operations expenses applied to HCLS and interstate common line support (http://xrl.us/bni6oy). “The demographics of Dell, like VTCI, require large sums of USF per customer to provide and maintain the services each rural American has had a right to receive since the Communications Act of 1934,” the telco wrote. “VTCI recommends swift action by the FCC approving the limited waiver requests."
The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association has concerns about the transparency, accuracy and predictability of regression analysis-based caps on USF support, association officials told FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel Wednesday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bni6ni). NTCA asked the commission to address statistical and data-related issues on the caps, and conduct or release the results of any testing to assess their validity and volatility. “Making the effort to more properly calibrate and test the caps should have minimal, if any, impact on the Commission’s budgetary objectives, given that the Wireline Competition Bureau itself has noted that the caps are anticipated to have at most a $10 million per year net ‘budget’ savings impact” once fully implemented in 2014, NTCA said.
Charter Communications, in bankruptcy three years ago, is impressing Wall Street with a growing subscriber base and favorable positioning against competitors under its third CEO in two years. That’s setting up a revival that could enable it to expand its broadband network and boost its presence in Washington, D.C., industry and company officials told us. A question is whether Washington could help fuel growth for Charter through money from the FCC’s new USF for broadband fund, industry officials said.