Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark., worries about the FCC Wireline Bureau’s plans to hike its rate floor in July. “The rate floor, which is currently set at $14 will rise to over $20 on July 1, 2014,” Pryor said in a Wednesday letter (http://1.usa.gov/P1Fo93) to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “Telecommunications providers offering service at rates below this rate floor could risk losing vital universal service support if they do not take action to immediately raise the telephone rates of their customers.” Wheeler acknowledged the concern during a separate Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Thursday, which Pryor did not participate in. The FCC instituted a series of rate floor hikes as part of its November 2011 USF order to prevent what the agency would consider improper USF subsidies. The agency plans to phase in the increase and delay implementation beyond July, Wheeler said. The rate floor is part of the agency’s attempts to phase out excessive subsidies for basic phone service.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler faced lawmakers again Thursday, this time addressing challenges such as rural broadband, tribal consultation and the pressing congressional deadline on the implementation of positive train control (PTC) technology, at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government hearing on the $375.38 million for the FCC that the White House requested in its FY 2015 budget proposal (http://fcc.us/1hNuRs2). Wheeler committed to working with a Senate Republican on larger telecom discussions, as well as the urgency of the PTC implementation deadline -- December 31, 2015.
The FCC defended its request for about $36 million more in funding for FY 2015 compared to current funding. The White House unveiled its proposed 2015 budget in early March and recommended Congress approve $375.38 million for the FCC (http://fcc.us/1hNuRs2). The House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee scrutinized the proposed budget during a hearing Tuesday, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Ajit Pai testified on behalf of the agency.
The House Small Business Subcommittee on Health and Technology dug into questions of rural broadband deployment Thursday at a field hearing in New York and found grave accuracy problems with broadband mapping, its head lawmaker told us. The hearing was at the Orleans County Legislature in Albion, N.Y. Written testimony released Thursday and interviews revealed plenty of scrutiny about what government problems participants believe may impede industry from deploying broadband infrastructure.
Halfway through a daylong FCC rural broadband workshop Wednesday, an audience member stepped up to the mic and asked how much money is available for the rural broadband “experiments,” and how many of the nearly 1,000 expressions of interest received will be granted. “Nothing has been decided,” responded Carol Mattey, deputy Wireline Bureau chief. How best to dole out its limited universal service money is the challenge for FCC officials, who made it clear they are seeking answers.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will recommend raising the USF contribution rate and sending more money to schools and libraries, if that’s necessary, he told a meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington Monday. “I will recommend this to my colleagues if warranted,” Wheeler said, according to prepared remarks (http://fcc.us/1qMDLLo) for the event, which was not open to the public. “But my colleagues and I can’t just pour more money into the program as it presently stands,” he said. “The first step in expansion is introspection."
Two Senate Republicans want the FCC to move forward on the USF’s $100 million Remote Areas Fund. Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire wrote a letter, dated Thursday, to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, saying: “If implemented correctly, RAF could potentially provide the most rural areas of the country, including the most rural parts of New Hampshire and Missouri, with access to advanced broadband services” (http://1.usa.gov/1fAJvU9). “We are encouraged that the Commission’s recent IP transitions item included a commitment to address the challenges of providing service to the most remote, unserved areas of the country by the end of 2014,” wrote Ayotte and Blunt. “Please provide us an update as to how the Commission plans to implement the $100 million annual RAF portion within the Universal Service Fund this year."
The proposed USF contribution factor for the second quarter of 2014 will be 16.6 percent, the FCC Office of Managing Director said in a public notice Wednesday (http://bit.ly/On0Zsp). That’s slightly up from the first quarter factor of 16.4 percent. It’s also more than a full percentage point higher than the 2013 second quarter contribution factor of 15.5 percent. But it’s down from a 2012 second quarter factor of 17.4 percent. The proposed contribution factor will automatically take effect within 14 days unless the FCC takes action to intervene, the notice said. Carriers may not recover through a federal universal service line-item an amount that exceeds 16.6 percent of the interstate telecom charges on a customer’s bill, the notice said.
The FCC should consider “immediately” referring several issues to the appropriate federal-state Joint Board, NARUC told an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler Friday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1cuZqUi). USF contribution reform and a replacement model for implementation of Connect America Phase II should be sent to the joint board, NARUC said. The FCC’s “reluctance, through multiple administrations,” to classify VoIP service as either a telecom service or “something else,” has caused “significant costs to industry and rate payers,” NARUC said.
The Telecommunications Industry Association underscored the necessity of passing the FCC Process Reform Act (HR-3675) into law, and praised the House for its scheduled floor vote Tuesday.