State regulators tackled the significance of the FCC’s access recovery charge (ARC) early on at its winter committee meetings in Washington. Panelists struggled to make sense of the charge, which has spurred heated filings between the D.C. Public Service Commission and Verizon and is a concern that’s come up in other states, as FCC filings have shown. A panel of telco and state regulators met Saturday afternoon to discuss the contested charge, introduced to make up for revenue telcos lost in reduced access rates when the FCC issued its November 2011 USF order.
The Lifeline reform order generated over $213 million in savings to the USF in 2012, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Thursday (http://xrl.us/bod6oa). “The Commission exceeded its savings target goal” of $200 million, the public notice said, going from an estimated $2.4 billion without the reform, to $2.2 billion with the new rules in place to combat waste, fraud and abuse. The bureau said continuation of in-depth data valuations, first begun in 2011, resulted in about $45 million in savings; elimination of Link Up support for installation costs saved $93 million; and a cap on Toll Limitation Service saved $1.5 million. Additional requirements regarding active usage, and stricter proof for eligibility and certification, also “likely produced savings in 2012,” the bureau said.
The 2013 high-cost loop support caps have affected 60 percent more companies than last year’s caps, NTCA told aides to several FCC commissioners Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bodwyx). The association of rural telcos pushed for “near-term resolution” of the statistical and data-related shortcomings of the USF caps, arguing action is “all the more urgent in the face of significant and troubling shifts in the caps” announced this week (CD Jan 31 p10). The number of capped companies has risen from around 100 to 160 “overnight,” NTCA said. Seventy companies were “swept under” by the 2013 caps after being unaffected in 2012, the association said. NTCA urged the commission to add together the capital and operating expense values for 2013 support calculations, and extend the phase-in of the caps, in order to “mitigate serious harms."
Accipiter Communications received a waiver of some of the high-cost USF support rules until the end of 2014. The Phoenix-area telco asked for waiver of the rule limiting per-line support to $250 per month, and a waiver of the high-cost loop support benchmarks rule limiting reimbursable capital and operating expenses. A Wireline Bureau order Wednesday determined a waiver is in the public interest, is justified based on Accipiter’s “reasonable” expenses, and will ensure the telco’s customers continue to have access to broadband and voice service.
The Wyoming Legislature may limit state regulation of Internet Protocol-enabled services. About half of U.S. states have passed laws limiting state regulators from overseeing IP, most notably California, which adopted its law last fall (CD Oct 2 p7). Months of tense debate last year generated the Wyoming bill, stakeholders told us. House Bill 18 was introduced to the Wyoming House of Representatives Jan. 8, unanimously passed the nine-member Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee Jan. 24 and passed out of the House after three readings Thursday, moving to the Senate.
Clarification: The research note encouraging the FCC to reformulate several of its USF rules and hold a careful rulemaking proceeding on the transition to all-IP networks was written by John Staurulakis Inc., a sister company of JSI Capital Advisors (CD Jan 3 p7).
The telecom industry was sharply divided on AT&T’s petition to eliminate legacy interconnection rules, as the U.S. telecom infrastructure moves toward all-Internet Protocol services. ILEC comments supported the petition, which would start with deregulatory “experiments” in various wire centers to gauge the technological and competitive effects of eliminating several ILEC obligations. Carriers and cable companies cautioned against eliminating interconnection requirements in the Telecom Act that they say protect consumers and competitors. The CLECs were split on a competing proposal by NTCA, which seeks an omnibus proceeding the association said would retain consumer-friendly regulations and incentivize IP interconnection. State associations and commissions worried about ensuring consumer protections as well as maintaining their own authority. Public interest groups were wary of AT&T’s petition, but several minority groups encouraged the idea of limited deregulatory trials to determine the effect on minority customers.
Telcos and cable companies said there wasn’t enough time to sift through the hundreds of thousands of National Broadband Map (NBM) challenges by the filing deadline for reply comments in docket 10-90 Thursday. The proceeding seeks input on the process of challenging the map’s designations. The cable and phone companies agreed a new, more formal challenge method was needed, but disagreed on the specifics. In comments earlier this month, cable companies and price-cap carriers criticized the NBM as “grossly” overinclusive and underinclusive depending on where one looks (CD Jan 11 p7). The map is used to determine where Connect America Fund Phase I money can be distributed. Price-cap carriers get access to the money to help fund broadband buildout in areas the map lists as unserved.
NARUC will tackle spectrum sharing, emergency communications coordination and the FCC’s “repeated abuses of informal rulemaking,” according to draft resolutions released this week (http://xrl.us/bob6pm). State regulators will consider the resolutions at their winter meeting in Washington in February. The proposed resolutions delve into past controversial territory, such as addressing FCC referral to the Federal-State Joint Boards on Separations and Universal Service. USTelecom objected to joint board referral provisions at the past two NARUC meetings, in Baltimore in November (CD Nov 14 p5) and Portland, Ore., last July (CD July 25 p8), although both of the resolutions passed.
Telcos and carriers could soon face a mandatory data collection to determine the extent of the rural call completion problem, FCC and industry officials told us. They said a Wireline Bureau notice of proposed rulemaking that circulated Jan. 14 proposes to require the first facilities-based originating interexchange carrier to track certain information about when calls to rural areas are completed, versus when calls to urban areas are completed. The NPRM proposes banning “phantom ringback” tones, which falsely lead a caller to believe the call is being connected, FCC and industry officials said. Rural phone associations have been pushing for action since it became clear that last year’s declaratory ruling on the importance of call completion wasn’t having the effect they had hoped for (CD April 16 p3). Last month, 34 senators urged FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to investigate why some calls to rural areas calls are delayed, have poor quality or fail to connect altogether.