Spectrum audit legislation will be a high priority for the House and Senate Commerce Committees when Congress reconvenes next year, industry and Hill sources said. Work likely will start in the House Communications Subcommittee with markup of two bills that address the scope of a spectrum inventory (HR-3125), and strategy for relocating holders of federal agency spectrum, freeing it for commercial use (HR- 3019). The Senate Communications Subcommittee also has an audit bill (S-649). Negotiations are ongoing among congressional staff and the administration on a comprehensive approach, industry sources said. There’s strong bipartisan support for an inventory bill.
AT&T asked the FCC to set a deadline to move telecom from circuit-switched to IP-based networks. The request came in comments this week on an FCC National Broadband Plan public notice that proposed the release of a notice of inquiry (NOI) on the transition. Small rural carriers cautioned the commission not to move too fast. Meanwhile, competitive carriers fought with Verizon over whether interconnection and traffic exchange requirements under Sections 251 and 252 of the Communications Act apply to IP networks. Wireless carriers said the rules should ensure regulatory parity.
The FCC broadband team believes private investment is essential and competition drives innovation and better choices, said Blair Levin, the plan coordinator, at the commission’s meeting Wednesday. The U.S. must make better use of “existing assets” such as the Universal Service Fund, spectrum and rights of way, he said. Chairman Julius Genachowski agreed that USF and spectrum are critical areas and said the government can’t afford to put off a thorough USF overhaul much longer.
The FCC tentatively concluded that the timing of the National Broadband Plan makes it impossible to overhaul the Universal Service Fund high-cost support mechanism for non-rural carriers like Qwest “at this time.” The commission had committed to answer a remand by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the subject by April 16. In a further notice of proposed rulemaking released late Tuesday, the commission sought comment on specific “interim changes” to address the court’s concerns and marketplace changes. While voting for the order, Commissioners Meredith Baker and Robert McDowell expressed some disappointment that the notice didn’t say more.
Idaho’s Public Utilities Commission told eight rural phone companies to adjust their rates closer to the statewide average if they want to keep receiving state universal service funds. The commission’s announcement Friday listed annual USF subsidies to Fremont Telecom ($66,636), ATC Communications ($63,850), Cambridge Telephone ($29,218), Midvale Telephone ($28,875), Direct Communications Rockland ($19,446), Inland Telephone ($15,557), Rural Telephone ($13,907) and Silver Star Telecom ($7,424). Idaho supports its fund by charging phone customers 10 cents monthly per residential line, 17 cents a business line and one-third of a cent a long-distance minute. To get USF money, a rural telco’s average residential and business local exchange rates must exceed 125 percent of the weighted statewide average rates for the services. Since 2005, when Idaho started allowing carriers to remove themselves from price regulation, the weighted average rates for customers of the two largest
Uncertainty and complexity in the intercarrier compensation system have held back broadband investment, Verizon said. In an ex-parte meeting last week with the FCC broadband team, the carrier said access fees for advanced services vary widely and “may depend on unresolved regulatory classifications and jurisdictional determinations that are unknown or irrelevant.” Verizon showed the team its September 2008 revamp plan for intercarrier compensation. The commission should “make clear in its National Broadband Plan that intercarrier compensation reform should ultimately result in a regime that includes a reasonable transition to a uniform default terminating rate for all carriers, provides opportunities for companies to recover a portion of lost revenues from their own end users, and ensures that a portion of other lost revenues may be recovered through a time- limited new recovery mechanism that would be part of the Universal Service Fund,” the carrier said. The FCC is considering USF spending cuts (CD Dec 10 p1). Verizon said it supports high-cost support for “truly high cost” areas that don’t “have competitive providers serving without support.”
FCC staffers will meet this week to discuss a proposed policy framework for the National Broadband Plan that will take up universal service and spectrum, said Bruce Gottlieb, Chairman Julius Genachowski’s chief counsel. “Currently the staff is in the process of talking with a lot of folks on the eighth floor on these issues,” he said on a Practising Law Institute panel. The meeting will explore USF and spectrum “in more detail than people have seen so far,” Gottlieb said.
Carriers would have to pay a record 14.1 percent of their long-distance revenue to the Universal Service Fund in the fourth quarter, if the FCC adopts the contribution factor proposed Friday. The figure is 1.8 percentage points higher than the fourth quarter, and 1.2 points higher than the third quarter’s 12.9 percent, which was the previous record. The announcement came as the FCC broadband team considers several cuts for the Universal Service as recommendations for the National Broadband Plan (CD Dec 10 p1). The Universal Service Administrative Co. said it would need to collect $2.1 billion from carriers in Q4. To set the carrier “contribution factor,” the commission divides the amount needed by projected carrier revenue. Of $2 billion in anticipated USF support, about $1.1 billion is projected for the rural high-cost program, $544.3 million for the E-rate program, $310 million for low-income support and $51.8 million for the rural health-care program. The low-income program saw the largest increase in support, rising about $48.3 million from last quarter.
Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell said the commission should give “serious consideration” to re-purposing the Universal Service Fund to help pay for broadband. Powell answered questions Friday during a live online chat in his capacity as honorary co-chairman of Broadband for America. “The USF is really about subsidizing phone service, but increasingly and eventually, broadband will become more important and more indispensable,” Powell said. “The USF should recognize that and adjust.” Neither the government nor the private sector acting alone can make broadband universal in the U.S., Powell said. “This is a massive and very expensive project,” he said. “The FCC estimates that it might cost as much as $350 billion to deploy a single fiber network to every home in America. In a public deficit environment one cannot imagine government ponying up that kind of money. So, private investment will be critical. At the same time, private industry needs government support in many ways -- developing a proper regulatory environment, helping secure rights of way and local access to build infrastructure are examples. Also, both sides want to increase adoption.” Asked how to increase adoption rates, Powell said the U.S. “needs to do a better job of showing and demonstrating why and how these connections can improve every day lives, advance educational opportunity for their kids, increase their options for career enhancement, and manage their health.” Powell also stressed the importance of getting more spectrum online for commercial use. “Wireless broadband is going to be a huge component of the broadband world,” he said. “For example, African-Americans have one of the lowest adoption rates for wireline service, but one of the highest rates of using data on mobile phones. Getting more spectrum and increasing efficiency of its use is critical.” Powell, along with the other honorary co-chairman of the group, former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., made a commercial that started airing in some markets Dec. 6 -- www.broadbandforamerica.com/video.
The FCC needs to make solving the digital divide a high priority for its broadband plan, Commissioner Michael Copps said at a Practising Law Institute conference Thursday. People are starting to realize that the broadband plan is not just “technospeak from broadband geeks” but can lead to policies that improve peoples’ lives, said Copps, who was introduced at the conference by Chairman Julius Genachowski. But if policymakers don’t get it right, the result could be “more and even wider divides in this country,” Copps said.