With 555 question marks, the 182-page further notice of proposed rulemaking on contribution reform, released late Monday, contains as many questions as there are feet in the Washington Monument. Throughout the further notice, after posing several dozen questions, the commission pauses to ask whether certain proposals are consistent with its fundamental goal of being efficient, fair, and sustainable.
SILICON VALLEY -- FCC-subsidized rural telehealth projects face obstacles from excessive commission paperwork to hooking up servers located in shower stalls, the head of California’s program said Tuesday. “Those forms … they're pretty onerous,” said CEO Eric Brown of the California Telehealth Network. Asked about the complaint, the Wireline Bureau’s spokesman said by email that “the FCC launched an NPRM in 2010, which, among other things, is looking at the lessons learned in the Pilot as part of broader reform of the universal service Rural Health Care program.”
Current FCC support levels allocated for Phase II of the USF Mobility Fund are “inadequate to achieve vital universal service goals,” and the agency should use a further rulemaking notice “to make additional funding available to competitive wireless providers,” the Rural Cellular Association said in a filing. The commission could reallocate “support foregone by price cap carriers that decline to exercise their statewide right of first refusal” to the Mobility Fund, RCA suggested (http://xrl.us/bm5sbp). “RCA further argued that the Commission should free up additional funds to support mobile wireless services by eliminating excessive support flowing to rural incumbent LECs, including by lowering the prescribed rate of return and limiting permissible recovery levels for capital and operating expenses."
The California VoIP legislation (SB-1161), as amended, wouldn’t eliminate any existing regulation or prohibit any future state regulation of traditional telephone service through a landline connection, said a letter by state Sen. Alex Padilla to supporters of the bill Friday. The bill, which would ban regulation over VoIP in the state, had spurred concerns over consumer protection of basic services (CD April 18 p6). The amendments also made clear that the bill would make no change to state USF and carrier-of-last-resort laws and regulations. It wouldn’t change the right of any customer to choose to subscribe to basic landline voice service, which comes with all the state consumer protections. Additionally, for consumers who choose to get voice service through a broadband connection, the bill wouldn’t eliminate any of the federal and state consumer protections that apply to those services, which include the requirement to provide 911 service, the letter said. The bill will be next heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Everything’s up in the air as the further notice of proposed rulemaking on contribution reform contains many more questions than answers. The notice, approved unanimously by the FCC Friday, poses questions about what types of communications providers should contribute to the Universal Service Fund, how contributions should be assessed, and how to reduce the overall cost of contribution. The text of the notice was not released by our deadline.
High-cost loop support got a major overhaul Wednesday, in an order designed to fix “problematic incentives and inequitable distribution of support” (http://xrl.us/bm49qi). The FCC Wireline Bureau order fleshed out the details of 2011’s commission-level USF/intercarrier compensation order, which set out a framework for reform. About 100 study areas with “very high costs relative to similarly situated peers” will see a total reduction in support of $65 million, the bureau said, and the reduction will be phased in between July 1 and 2014. “By delaying the full impact of the reductions until 2014, we provide companies who would be adversely affected adequate time to make adjustments and, if necessary, demonstrate that a waiver is warranted either to correct inaccurate boundary information and/or to ensure that consumers in the area continue to receive voice service,” the order said. The bureau expects about 500 study areas to receive $55 million to fund new broadband investment.
The Alaska Rural Coalition’s assertion that the USF/intercarrier compensation order treats remote Alaska competitive eligible telecom carriers more favorably than remote Alaska ILECs “is pure rubbish,” General Communication said Monday in a letter to the FCC (http://xrl.us/bm4yr9). “ARC simply does not want to compete -- and wants to be paid USF support for not doing so,” GCI said. ARC had requested reconsideration of the order’s “unintended consequence” of “disparate high cost support and regulation” between direct competitors. “The two year delay afforded all CETCs provides a competitive advantage to GCI in the local market while at the same time GCI can and will price its local telephone service as cheaply as necessary to capture customers and the associated high cost support,” ARC said in a letter Thursday (http://xrl.us/bm4ys4).
It’s important for the FCC to correct some data input “errors” in the regression analysis impact calculations for West River Telephone and Kennebec Telephone, wrote both of South Dakota’s Senators and South Dakota’s House member on Friday (http://xrl.us/bm4vdv). “While the individual errors and support reductions for these companies may appear insignificant in relation to the overall FCC analysis, the loss of over $500,000 is significant to these companies.” Both companies stand to lose their USF support due to the incorrect data inputs, said Sens. John Thune, R, Tim Johnson, D, and Rep. Kristi Noem, R.
The one-per-household limit, commissioning biennial audits and verifying the residency of customers at temporary addresses were some of the new rules criticized in the eight petitions for reconsideration of the Lifeline order received by the FCC. Oppositions to the petitions are due May 7 in docket 11-42, replies May 15, said a notice in Friday’s Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bm4kwc).
The Senate Agriculture Committee unveiled a fresh Farm Bill Friday, including $50 million per year for the Rural Broadband Loan Program operated by the Rural Utilities Service. Congress must pass a Farm Bill every five years -- the current law expires at the end of 2012. Also last week, Agriculture Committee member Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, introduced the Connecting Rural America Act, which would reauthorize the program but provide only $20 million annually. Rural telecom companies hailed the Brown bill, aimed at further expanding broadband access to small, remote, and high poverty communities.