The Alaska Rural Coalition and its member Ketchikan Public Utilities made “mistaken factual assertions” in recent filings in support of its request for reconsideration of various aspects of the USF/intercarrier compensation fund, General Communication said Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bm4h4h). “ARC has either failed to present accurate facts or has applied an unfounded interpretation of how the urban local rate floor would apply to GCI,” the telco wrote. GCI said neither its tariffed wireline basic local service rate nor the local component of its “No Limits” bundle falls below the local urban rate benchmarks. If a rate floor is applied to a competitive eligible telecom carrier, as ARC suggests, there would be no reason to continue to pay full support to the ILECs because “any other rule would create the anomalous result of paying one competitor more in USF support because they failed to lower their rates to meet the competition,” GCI said. GCI also took issue with assertions that the order provides for “identical support” to CETCs, and that ARC’s proposal for a two-year delay in implementation of RLEC reforms in Alaska would be “budget neutral."
Big Bend Telephone Co. filed its 2011 audited financial statements as supplemental support for its petition for waiver (CD April 6 p1) of certain USF rules limiting reimbursable support (http://xrl.us/bm4hc3). Big Bend requested confidential treatment of the 56-page financial statement.
The Ad Hoc Coalition of International Telecommunications Companies supports USTelecom’s call for long-term, comprehensive changes to the FCC USF contribution system, the group said in a letter to the agency Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bm4ha3). The group, which includes several domestic and foreign long distance service providers, called out the “Carrier’s Carrier Rule” as “one of several irrational and inefficient processes in need of immediate reform.
The “dust has not even started to settle” on the “sweeping reforms” adopted in the USF/intercarrier compensation order, and the FCC should answer the many pending questions carriers have with respect to implementation before making additional changes, the NTCA told an advisor to Chairman Julius Genachowski on Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bm4g9j). NTCA also expressed concern with rural call completion issues, urging the FCC to take action. “These problems are unlikely to be resolved unless and until a provider that has failed materially and repeatedly to route calls to destinations as sought by originating callers faces some consequence for such failures,” the association said. Its representatives also met with Wireline Bureau officials Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bm4g96) to request changes to financial reporting requirements, raise concerns about conditions needed to be met to grant waiver requests, and discuss the “inequitable and improper” elimination of safety net additive support for carriers which deployed broadband-capable networks in 2010 and 2011. NTCA reiterated its continuing concern about the use of a regression analysis to establish caps on USF-supported capital and operating expenses.
Some state legislators and foes of a California bill to ban state regulation over VoIP worried the proposal would strip away consumer protection of basic services, they said during a hearing Tuesday. SB-1611 sponsor Sen. Alex Padilla (D) emphasized that the bill wouldn’t change existing consumer protection regulation. The bill passed the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee, which Padilla chairs, and is heading to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Several rate-of-return carriers said Monday they would file for requests for waivers of new rules in the USF/intercarrier compensation order limiting reimbursable capital and operating costs. The form letters, sent by five carriers, all blamed “a flaw” in the quantile regression analysis caps “that penalizes companies who have been diligent to bring advanced services to rural areas.” The five new waiver requests would more than double the existing number of waiver requests Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Carol Mattey said the FCC had received as of last week (CD April 12 p1).
A numbers-based USF contribution methodology would be relatively easy to implement and monitor, and provide stability and predictability in contribution obligations, members of the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Thursday (http://xrl.us/bm3252). A “pure” numbers methodology is “still the FCC’s best option,” and would allow business users to contribute their “fair share” while not unduly burdening consumers, said the group representing some major companies that buy telecom services. A methodology based on connections to the Internet or network would be “viable,” but only if obligations are applied fairly, they said. A revenues-based methodology “has inherent flaws” that already plague the existing funding mechanism, they said.
Two months after the FCC’s declaratory ruling to “remind” carriers about the longstanding prohibition on traffic restriction, call completion problems aren’t getting any better, several rural carriers and state public utility commissioners told us. Call completion will remain a problem until the FCC actively enforces rules already on the books, they said, stressing the inability of state commissions to deal with problems that cross state lines. According to a survey by network and infrastructure company Anpi Zone presented Thursday at the “IP Solutions” conference in Indianapolis, more than 60 percent of ILEC and CLEC respondents said call-quality problems have either not improved or gotten worse since the declaratory ruling.
The FCC’s USF and intercarrier compensation order will lead to lower levels of investment in broadband and telecom assets because of new uncertainties over future cash flow, representatives from an industry consulting firm told agency officials, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm3j2c). As the cost of capital grows and loan defaults continue, rural LECs will be increasingly unable to get access to the capital, Balhoff and Williams said: “Retroactive” regulatory recovery rules and a “rigorous” waiver process will contribute to an “unclear path to a viable operating model in high-cost regions."
Congress is more than happy to let the FCC sort out the USF mess on its own, a House Communications Subcommittee Republican aide said Wednesday. “There is no motivation currently on the Hill to delve into these issues,” said Ray Baum, aide to Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. Even if there were motivation, “there is really no consensus,” he said, pointing to a schism between free-market proponents who'd like to see the fund disappear, and some who want it to grow. To Baum, Congress’s role at the moment is to seek input from interested parties and pass it on to the FCC to come up with a workable solution. “If this issue doesn’t lend itself to agency expertise, there isn’t one that does,” he told a Catholic University conference. “We're really wishing them the best."