The FCC shares the goal that Universal Service Fund audits “be efficient and not unduly burdensome” on small rural telcos, Chairman Julius Genachowski said. In a letter last month to Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Genachowski said the commission is “aware that recent audits of beneficiaries have at times been complicated by miscommunications between the auditors and the beneficiaries and that the audit findings may not have always provided meaningful results. The FCC is seeking to remedy these concerns and to establish a USF audit program that best meets the FCC’s oversight needs and incorporates lessons learned from previous audits.” The commission began an inquiry on USF administration in September 2008 and is reviewing the record, the chairman added.
FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker wants a spectrum policy plan that’s not just a “subset” of the National Broadband Plan, she said at a Phoenix Center event Thursday. The “cross-governmental long-term strategic framework” on spectrum “should be one of our major efforts of 2010 and should chart the government’s course well into the decade,” she said. The plan would include a spectrum inventory and a review of secondary market rules, she said. “By taking full stock of our spectrum resources and how they are being used, and adapting secondary market and service rules to the changed conditions and technologies we have today, I think we can make great strides to help ensure that the U.S. consumers are the beneficiaries of a world-class mobile broadband infrastructure.”
Conflicts among state universal service assessment methods for VoIP necessitate a single national policy, Vonage said. The FCC can address existing conflicts and prevent new ones “by permitting providers to allocate subscribers’ revenues among the states on the basis of any reasonable data, including place of primary use, billing address, phone number, or E911 location, so long as the provider uses the same basis for all customers,” the company said. The approach “would allow providers to use assessment methods that are consistent with existing billing systems,” and would be less confusing for consumers, it said. “Granting providers flexibility to choose assessment bases (so long as the same basis is used for all customers) would allow providers to use the same basis for state USF obligations as for state sales or other tax obligations, and thereby avoid the customer confusion that would arise if customer bills were to show taxes from one state and state USF pass-throughs from another.” Opening a rulemaking is the fastest path to a national policy, Vonage said. States have urged the commission to reject the company’s proposal (CD Nov 3 p8).
The FCC will soon issue a further notice of proposed rulemaking on Universal Service Fund high-cost support for non-rural carriers like Qwest, said two agency officials. The commission committed to release a rulemaking notice by Dec. 15 and a final order by April 16, as it works toward responding to a 2005 remand by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (CD June 11 p7). In 2005, the court called unlawful the FCC’s current non-rural rules, which address carriers like Qwest that serve high-cost areas with too many lines to be considered “rural” by the statutory definition. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski last week circulated the notice, which contains tentative conclusions, agency officials said. One described the tentative conclusions as very bare with “not a lot of new ideas,” and said the further rulemaking notice seems designed as a “punt.” Commission spokeswoman Jen Howard declined to comment. Meanwhile, industry meetings with the FCC on a comprehensive USF overhaul have been heating up (CD Nov 27 p5). The impetus seems to be the non-rural support item and an expectation among industry that the regulator will tee up reform in the National Broadband Plan due this February, agency officials said. Monday, Windstream phoned an aide to Genachowski about the agency’s rulemaking notice on the 10th Circuit remand, urging the FCC to seek input on how to better target federal universal service support directly to granular high-cost areas, an ex-parte filing said. Windstream said the FCC should stop distinguishing between rural and non-rural carriers, and kill eligibility requirements based on statewide average costs. President John Rose of the Organization for the Promotion & Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies met separately Monday with aides to Commissioners Michael Copps, Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker, said an ex-parte filing. The meetings focused on USF and intercarrier compensation reform “in the context of” the plan, OPASTCO said.
CTIA weighed in for the first time on Local Switching Support. The association called for comprehensive changes in the Universal Service Fund and opposed what it called a “backward-looking petition” by the Coalition for Equity in Switching Support. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated a draft notice of proposed rulemaking that tentatively concluded incumbent local exchange carriers should get additional universal service support under the LSS mechanism if they lose a significant number of access line customers (CD Oct 13 p8). But the commission asked for more data before it makes a final decision.
Libraries face a “broadband crisis” because of increased demand from their patrons and the growing number of bandwidth-intensive applications, combined with limited resources to meet growing needs, the American Library Association said in a filing at the FCC, on National Broadband Plan Public notice No. 15, on broadband access in education. ALA urged the FCC to increase the current $2.25 billion cap on the E-rate program, which it said is a necessary step if libraries are to continue to provide broadband access to the communities they serve.
Libraries face a “broadband crisis” because of increased demand from their patrons and the growing number of bandwidth-intensive applications, combined with limited resources to meet growing needs, the American Library Association said in a filing at the FCC, on National Broadband Plan Public notice No. 15, on broadband access in education. ALA urged the FCC to increase the current $2.25 billion cap on the E-rate program, which it said is a necessary step if libraries are to continue to provide broadband access to the communities they serve.
Alaska’s Regulatory Commission said it made many decisions related to telecom in its fiscal year through June. The commission proposed regulations on access charge and state universal service policies, including whether to provide state universal service funding to local exchange carriers of last resort. In addition to handling several local rate cases, the commission denied a request by the Alaska Exchange Carriers Association for a retroactive increase in access rates to make up for a calculation error of about $678,000. In its annual Universal Service Fund certification to the FCC, the state commission reported that in 2008 Alaska carriers received roughly $160 million from the federal USF. Noting a surplus in the Telecommunications Relay Service fund, the commission cut the universal access surcharge to users in half to $0.05 a line monthly. The commission also opened a docket to figure out how to keep the 907 area code from running out of numbers. Consumer complaints led the commission to investigate a proposal to collect a $2 fee for each collect local call from a state inmate. The proposal was withdrawn, the commission said. Commissioners granted requests by GCI for designation as a wireless eligible telecommunications carrier in the study areas of Copper Valley Telephone, Interior Telephone, Ketchikan Public Utilities and Mukluk Telephone.
Any action the FCC takes on the Universal Service Fund “will be very cognizant of consumers and will be focused on looking at ways to break savings out of the system, so the impact on consumers can be lessened if at all possible,” Chairman Julius Genachowski told reporters after an FCC meeting Wednesday. A Wall Street Journal article that morning said the FCC was thinking about hiking consumer USF fees and imposing open-access policies. Also, Genachowski said a controversial Harvard University study on broadband should have equal weight with other information in the record.
A draft Universal Service Fund reform bill won general praise from both sides of the aisle at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Tuesday. Nearly all applauded its plan to expand the fund to cover broadband, but there were differing opinions on how to pay for it. Rural lawmakers raised concerns about the proposal’s impact on support in hard-to-reach areas that could benefit from increased broadband deployment. Key Democrats support a separate bill that would create a “universal broadband fund.”