The IP transition may herald changes and an end to certain aspects of common carriage regulation, panelists said Wednesday at an event in Washington hosted by the Progressive Policy Institute. Platform competition now emerging may cause certain common carrier obligations to “melt away,” said Navigant Economics Managing Director Hal Singer. “Imposing these obligations when they're not necessary isn’t innocuous -- it’s very, very harmful.” A certain amount of competition must presage such melting away of obligations, he said, an area where the FCC could be of more help in producing data. Singer’s clients have included AT&T.
DENVER -- Judges seemed generally receptive Tuesday to FCC arguments that the agency acted reasonably when it implemented its landmark 2011 Connect America Fund order. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel spent several hours hearing challenges to the order, which rewrote the $4.5 billion USF and set intercarrier compensation on a path toward bill and keep. As judges told challengers that ambiguous terms in the Telecom Act should be resolved in favor of reasonable FCC interpretation, challengers responded either that the terms weren’t ambiguous or the interpretation wasn’t reasonable.
ORLANDO -- The NARUC Telecom Committee approved resolutions on federalism and surveillance at its meeting Monday. The federalism resolution approved a yearlong effort to update a paper on federalism and how the states interact with the FCC and the industry. The surveillance resolution, introduced by Indiana Utility Regulatory Commissioner Larry Landis, was also passed by the committee with major changes to reflect concern that customer proprietary network information (CPNI) restrictions are being breached by telco cooperation with the National Security Agency. All NARUC commissioners will vote on the resolutions at the closing session Wednesday.
Two of the three judges set to hear a challenge Tuesday of the FCC Connect America Fund order are no strangers to telecom appeals. Judge Jerome Holmes of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled for the FCC in a case challenging its denial of a forbearance petition. Chief Judge Mary Beck Briscoe was on a 2005 panel overturning an FCC action on USF rules. Attorneys we spoke to said predicting outcomes based on past opinions is risky business. Some willing to venture a prediction said the panel’s history could bode favorably for the challengers, while others cautioned there weren’t enough cases to spot a reliable pattern. The 2011 order, which rewrote the rules of the $4.5 billion-a-year USF and set intercarrier compensation on a path toward bill-and-keep, will be the subject of several hours of oral argument that has had lawyers on all sides busily preparing (CD Nov 8 p10).
Long overdue, Phase II of the Connect America Fund has several open questions about its implementation, attorneys told a Federal Communications Bar Association audience Thursday evening. Originally scheduled to be in place by the end of 2012, the second phase will provide five years of USF support to price cap carriers in return for a statewide commitment to build out networks that can provide voice and broadband service. But many questions are still up in the air, panelists said, from how the cost model will work to what approach the competitive bidding process will take.
"There can be no question” about the importance of the Universal Service Fund and promoting broadband deployment in rural America, but doing so won’t be easy, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Thursday. FCC commissioners got a brief status update on its moves to reform the USF during the meeting. The presentation went over in some detail recent history of USF reform, including progress on Phase II of the Connect America Fund. Other commission members indicated they had concerns that parts of the program limit full use of the program by carriers. Staff last gave an update at the FCC’s June meeting.
The National Exchange Carrier Association submitted the “latest view” of USF data for the “2011-x and 2012-x” periods, as requested by FCC staff in connection with analyses related to recently adopted USF reforms, NECA said in a filing Wednesday (http://bit.ly/HMTdEO). The data include all changes reported during the past three months, such as corrections for errors and omissions, and “average schedule company” to “cost company” conversions.
New FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who took office Nov. 4, has yet to have to make a hard or controversial decision, and plenty will follow, but instead has been busy setting a tone for his chairmanship. That started his second day when Wheeler met with staff, promising he would be open to ideas and plans to be the kind of chairman who walks the halls at the commission. The same day he released a lengthy blog post (http://fcc.us/1cCIDhM) offering his broad view on the role the FCC must play in a changing world.
Universal service needs to remain “a pillar upon which the IP evolution is built and sustained,” National Telecommunications Cooperative Association CEO Shirley Bloomfield told new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a letter Monday (http://bit.ly/1cl1BEP). NTCA mentioned its 2012 petition proposing various “policy paths” that the FCC could pursue as it deals with the IP transition. It’s important to “avoid clinging as a matter of routine or comfort to old rules in the face of changes in technology, competition, and consumer preference,” Bloomfield said -- but it’s also important to have clear “rules of the road.” The “rural call completion epidemic” is a “canary in a coal mine” that shows the risks that can arise without clear rules, she said. The FCC should also work to reduce regulatory uncertainty, she said, and reform the quantile regression analysis-based caps on high-cost USF support that have frozen broadband investment.
Corrections: (1) The changes city-owned Longmont Power & Communications is making to its fiber network — to which it will continue as sole service provider — is to build it out to reach all residents (CD Nov 7 p5). (2) The USF-funded Lifeline program (CD Nov 8 p6) does not pay for any cellphones that participating carriers give to Lifeline subscribers free of charge. (3) Clarification: The FCC Intergovernmental Affairs Committee starts its reauthorized two-year term the date of its first meeting, which will be after Dec. 2 (CD Nov 4 p15).