A “fundamental” recommendation of the National Broadband Plan will be creation of “partnerships” between the government and the private and nonprofit sectors to bring down the cost of computers and monthly broadband service for the poor and to provide free training and applications to help people access education and employment information online, said Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan Tuesday at the Digital Inclusion Summit, co-hosted by the FCC. “The government can’t do it alone,” Donovan said. Tuesday’s summit included four of the five FCC commissioners and members of Congress. It came a week before formal unveiling of the National Broadband Plan by the FCC. The Tuesday meeting was also hosted by the Knight Foundation.
Claims that free conference calling services benefit incumbent local exchange carriers are misleading, said AT&T and Qwest executives, reacting to a recent report by Information Age Economics (CD March 4 p12). “The report makes a claim that free conference calling is good because it stimulates business,” said Hank Hultquist, an AT&T vice president. “If we really thought that were the case, it’s something we would have done on our own.”
Proposals to overhaul the Universal Service Fund mechanism including eliminating funding for voice-only networks will involve 10 years of transforming the high-cost fund into the Connect America Fund, the FCC said Friday. That’s intended to extend broadband service and provide ongoing support in certain areas without increasing the overall USF $8 billion cap, the agency officials told reporters. The proposed change is an attempt to transition from supporting voice telephone services to using funds to deliver broadband networks, said Omnibus Broadband Initiative Executive Director Blair Levin.
The Alliance of Rural CMRS Carriers asked the FCC to impose an interim cap on per-line universal support for all incumbent local exchange carriers, freezing payouts at March 2008 or March 2010 levels. The filing came almost two years after the FCC imposed a cap on universal service payments to competitive eligible telecommunications carriers (CETCs) in May 2008. Rural carriers lost a challenge to that order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The FCC shouldn’t rush to reclassify broadband as a Title II service, even if as expected the agency loses in the Comcast case now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, said Helgi Walker, the attorney who argued the case for Comcast. She spoke during a discussion Wednesday hosted by the Federalist Society. The court’s decision is likely to be narrow enough that it won’t seriously undermine FCC authority in other areas, she said.
Broadcasters should seek a deal with the recording industry on performance royalties due to current “political realities,” said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher in a keynote at an NAB conference Tuesday. Broadcasters in the audience objected strongly to the concept. Boucher also praised the FCC’s proposed voluntary approach for taking broadcast spectrum, and said spectrum inventory legislation is nearing a full committee vote.
SAN FRANCISCO -- The FCC is making “the hard decision” with the National Broadband Plan to shift universal service money toward broadband from current “less productive” uses, instead of creating a new fund at consumers’ expense as the industry would prefer, said Blair Levin, who runs the commission’s staff work on the plan. Most of the lines that don’t support broadband belong to AT&T, Qwest and Verizon, and under the high-cost USF system, “they have no incentive to upgrade,” he said late Wednesday at a Goldman Sachs conference.
The National Broadband Plan will contain many specific recommendations on “all of the areas you would expect,” said Edward Lazarus, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s chief of staff, in a keynote at Catholic University’s Communications Symposium Wednesday.
The National Broadband Plan will contain many specific recommendations on “all of the areas you would expect,” said Edward Lazarus, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s chief of staff, in a keynote at Catholic University’s Communications Symposium Wednesday.
The National Broadband Plan should include a “significant discussion” of FCC “authority and jurisdiction issues,” representatives of public-interest groups said at a meeting with Chairman Julius Genachowski and aides. “On several different issues core to the NBP, including major USF and consumer protection issues, many commenters have either highlighted the inadequacies of Title I jurisdiction or argued that a Title II classification (with appropriate forbearance) would be a superior path,” said an ex parte filing. “Because the goals in the NBP require a sound legal foundation, the question of jurisdiction is paramount.” Representatives of the Media Access Project, Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America, Free Press, the New America Foundation and Public Knowledge attended the meeting.