The Universal Service Administrative Co. won’t accept USF high-cost and low-income forms at its New Jersey mailing address after Dec. 31, USAC said Tuesday. Starting Oct. 1, eligible telecom carriers should mail to USAC’s Washington, D.C., office FCC Forms 497, 507, 508, 509 and 525; local switching support forms; interstate access support line count filings, CMT revenue filings; and any other information previously sent to New Jersey. E-mail and fax numbers remain unchanged. USAC recommended filing FCC Forms 497 and 525 online, “to avoid interruption in form processing.”
Carriers would have to pay 12.3 percent of their long-distance revenue to the Universal Service Fund in the fourth quarter, if the FCC adopts the contribution factor proposed Monday. The figure is 0.6 percentage points less than this quarter’s 12.9 percent, a record-setting figure that elicited alarm and outrage (CD July 31 p5) from state consumer advocates and carriers advocating USF reform. The Universal Service Administrative Co. said it would need to collect $1.86 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 $1.15 billion is projected for the rural high-cost program, $542.2 million for the E-rate program, $261.7 million for low-income support and $53.4 million for the rural health-care program.
Interconnected VoIP providers should be required to pay state universal service fees, said states and rural wireline carriers in comments filed at the FCC Wednesday on a petition by the Nebraska Public Service Commission and Kansas Corporation Commission (CD Sept 4 p6). But Verizon and Google fought the concept of VoIP having an intrastate component subject to state jurisdiction. Vonage and some other VoIP providers didn’t object to paying state USF, but said the FCC must open a separate rulemaking first.
NTIA and RUS unveiled a new searchable database late Wednesday that provides public information on broadband grant applications. The database is intended to provide “a useful tool for the public that will provide transparency” while highlighting the benefits of projects, applicants were told in a recent e-mail. The database is searchable by organization, keywords, project type, program and state. Search results additionally list applicant contact information, project title, grant money requested and a project description. Those who want to protect proprietary information have until Monday to provide a redacted copy of their executive summary.
The FCC should rule that the Universal Service Administrative Co. can’t “indirectly” impose USF fees on international-only long-distance providers, said the Ad Hoc Coalition of International Telecommunications Companies. The commission also should rule that it lacks jurisdiction to impose USF obligations on those from outside the U.S., it said. In a petition last week, the coalition said foreign providers are exempt from paying USF, but often face indirect USF obligations resulting from pass-through charges from their underlying carriers. USAC’s fee assessments are “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to federal law,” and the commission’s “sanctioning of USAC’s actions is inexcusable,” the coalition said. If the FCC decides not to issue a declaratory ruling, it should open an investigation of the matter, the group said.
FCC and Hill policymakers should consider the role private investment plays in broadband penetration as work goes forward on a national plan, analysts said at an American Consumer Institute (ACI) seminar Tuesday. The plan needs to weigh how public policy goals of increasing broadband speed and access are tied to industry’s financial underpinnings, said panelists. “Much of the debate at the FCC so far has been very general … there have been no big ideas,” said Larry Darby of ACI, a non-profit that supports research into market solutions when analyzing consumer issues.
Oversight hearings on the broadband stimulus program and the Genachowski FCC are the first order of business in the House Communications Subcommittee as Congress returns. Other matters will have a tough time getting on the agenda as lawmakers resume work on health care and climate change legislation. Few expect major telecom enactments this year, other than must-pass satellite reauthorization legislation and possibly a cybersecurity bill, according to lobbyists, trade associations and Hill sources.
Some small rural phone companies are asking if Google and other content providers should contribute to the Universal Service Fund. In filings and meetings this summer at the FCC, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association has urged the FCC to open a rulemaking on the subject (CD Aug 31 p9). Content providers impose significant costs on companies’ networks, and charging them for USF would further the FCC’s broadband deployment goals, said NTCA Vice President Dan Mitchell in an interview. But a Google spokesman disputed the credibility of NTCA’s evidence. And some phone companies aren’t sure the proposal can be implemented.
The FCC could cite existing wireless universal service contribution mechanisms to justify requiring interconnected VoIP providers to contribute to state universal service funds based on intrastate revenue (CD Aug 26 p8), said the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. NARUC Telecom Committee Chairman Ray Baum and General Counsel Brad Ramsay met separately on Tuesday with aides to Commissioner Robert McDowell and FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick, an ex parte said. Commercial mobile radio services are “if anything, more portable” than nomadic VoIP services, and CMRS companies contribute to both federal and state USF, noted NARUC. “This suggests the FCC could cite to existing wireline and CMRS contribution mechanisms to clarify/interpret the existing regulations and specify State mechanisms that, are based on billing addresses, like wireline carriers, that assess no more than the 35.1 percent complement to the federal safe harbor amount -- necessarily do not double recover costs and also therefore necessarily ‘do not burden the federal program.'”
The Universal Service Fund’s payment error rate increased to 19.2 percent in fiscal 2008 from 14.9 percent in 2007, a Congressional Research Service report said. It called the increase “significant.” It put the error rate for all programs in 2008 at 3.9 percent. Incorrect USF payments were $1.3 billion, up from $906 million the previous year, the report said. “Progress in reducing improper payments has been uneven, with rates rising and falling over time,” the report said. The USF program was among those with double- digit error rates reported for the first time in fiscal 2007, the Service said. The report blamed the errors on claims with insufficient information and on clerical errors in processing paperwork. Agencies are required under a 2002 law to report the steps they're taking to fix payment errors. But a recent Government Accountability Office report found that only four agencies supplied the information. The FCC wasn’t among them. Bills in Congress, S-1508 and HR-3393, take up the problem. The bills would raise reporting requirements and call for a possible appropriations freeze if problems aren’t dealt with.