Internet service providers should be required to provide e-mail address portability, similar to that required for local phone numbers, for at least six months after a customer terminates ISP service, according to a petition for rulemaking filed at the FCC. Gail Mortenson said her AOL e- mail account was abruptly canceled after AOL learned that the account, tied to AOL’s old Internet subscription service, had been opened by her son when he was a minor, though she paid for it. A freelance copy editor in the District of Columbia, Mortenson said prospective customers couldn’t reach her after AOL closed the account, and she lost access to e-mails stored online. AOL canceled the account with “no notice whatsoever,” Mortenson said, and she’s considering legal action against the company. The petition was filed July 20 but surfaced only recently. E-mail addresses are just as crucial for public identity as phone numbers, she said, and the U.S. Postal Service also forwards mail for six months after an address change. “As in the pre-LNP days, consumers and businesses are effectively held hostage by their ISPs,” she said. Mortenson cited the FCC’s “broad ancillary authority” over communications that may appear outside its scope, such as VoIP, but are “critical telecommunications- like services” with a strong public interest component. CALEA, E-911, disability access and USF contributions were all imposed on IP-based communications through ancillary authority, she said. “There is no reason to treat e-mail address portability any differently.”
Rural consumers should decide what kind of telecom service they want, rather than others “jamming one technology down their throats,” a CTIA spokesman said Tuesday in response to a plan to cap Universal Service Fund subsidies for wireless providers (CD Oct 2 p3). “Rural consumers have every right to get the same communications abilities as New York and Houston” and that includes wireless service, he said. Wireline providers are trying to limit choices for rural consumers by limiting the amount of subsidies wireless carriers can get to serve those customers, he said. The Keep America Connected Coalition, the sponsor of Monday’s conference, appears to “start from the assumption that rural telephone companies are delivering… real value today under the ‘high cost’ portion of the USF,” said Cap the Fund, a consumer group that supports reducing the Universal Service Fund. Consumers pay “a heavy toll… for outlandish USF tax subsidies going into the pockets of both wireless companies and wireline rural telephone companies,” the group said.
The telecom industry argued vehemently against modifying special access rules in a House Telecom Subcommittee hearing Tuesday, as Democratic leaders pushed for new pricing policies. Democratic leaders also condemned the FCC’s forbearance petition policies as lacking transparency, preventing Congress from exercising “appropriate” oversight. “Unacceptable,” House Commerce Chairman John Dingell, D- Mich., said in a back-and-forth discussion with Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke.
An FCC vote on whether to cap universal service subsidies to competitive rural telecom companies “hopefully” will occur in the “very, very near future,” FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate said Monday at a conference on Universal Service Fund reform. Asked to specify the timing, Tate said only FCC Chairman Kevin Martin can answer more definitively. She co- chairs the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, which earlier this year recommended the interim cap to the FCC. Tate said she’s still pushing for a Nov. 1 deadline for the Joint Board to make another recommendation to the FCC on longer-term changes in the USF.
Carriers of various sizes told the FCC they back a bid by Windstream to convert to price cap regulation (CD Aug 8 p9) -- but for different reasons. Big companies like Verizon saw Windstream’s regulatory shift as raising a prospect of savings in access charges and Universal Service Fund contributions. Midsized rural companies saw a chance to follow Windstream’s lead and gain flexibility themselves.
Telecom carriers will contribute slightly less to the Universal Service Fund as a percentage of revenue in the fourth quarter, the FCC said. The “contribution factor,” or percent of interstate and international revenue that carriers donate to the fund, will drop to 11 percent in the fourth quarter, starting in October, from 11.3 percent. After rising significantly in the second quarter, to 11.7 percent from 9.7 percent, that percentage has been dropping slightly. The percentage reflects the sum spent on USF subsidies and the amount of industry revenue available to draw from. The fourth-quarter figure is designed to collect $1.9 billion, more than half going to the “high-cost” fund to support rural telephony. The rest goes to the E-rate, Lifeline low-income support and rural health care services.
Both broadband and wireless should be in the mix for high-cost Universal Service Fund reform, the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service said Thursday in a brief statement. The board adopted the statement in July, but it took the FCC two months to release it, sources said Friday.
The FCC Wednesday released an order allowing the agency to come down hard on those trying to defraud the Universal Service Fund program. Under previous rules, the FCC could “debar” from participation in the program only those found to have defrauded the schools and libraries program. The rule change expands enforcement throughout the program. “Debarment of applicants, service providers, consultants, or others who have defrauded the USF is necessary to protect the integrity of the universal service program,” the order said. “We do not find any reason to exclude the high-cost, rural health care, or low-income programs from our debarment rules.”
The FCC should raise the income ceiling for LifeLine and Link-Up program eligibility so the programs are in line with a similar one subsidizing heating costs, the Iowa Utilities Board said in comments filed late Friday. The FCC voted in 2004 to raise the Lifeline and Link-Up eligibility ceiling to 135 percent of federal poverty guidelines, seeking comments on whether to raise it to 150 percent. The agency recently asked for comments to “refresh” that issue, which had lain dormant.
Qwest urged the FCC to crack down on traffic pumping by competitive local exchange companies, saying the problem won’t be solved by targeting incumbent LECs alone. At the same time, a group of small telephone companies that have been engaging in the so-called scheme complained to the FCC that bigger telecom companies are refusing to pay the access charges that have been generated. Traffic pumping is when a small ILEC enters into a partnership with a “free calling service” to attract more of the long distance calling that’s subject to access charges. The small ILEC often jacks up its access rate ahead of time to assure even more revenue from interstate telecom companies like Qwest and AT&T. Qwest said it agreed with a recent letter from AT&T (CD Aug 1 p10) that warned the problem won’t go away unless both ILECs and CLECs are targeted. If the FCC “is successful in reducing incentives of small ILECs to engage in such schemes” the problem will “simply move to CLECs,” Qwest said in an Aug. 15 letter to the FCC. CLEC rates aren’t directly regulated by the FCC so the agency can’t require rate adjustments as it can for rate-of-return regulated ILECs, Qwest said. An alternative would be to declare that traffic to free calling services is not “terminating traffic” and thus CLEC access charges can’t be levied on it, Qwest said. The agency also could require CLECs to certify that they don’t expect access traffic to grow beyond a specified percentage over any 3- month period. If traffic greatly exceeded that level, the FCC could step in, Qwest said. A third approach would be a rule that traffic above a set number of minutes per month wouldn’t be subject to the access tariffs. Also filing on Aug. 15, six rural LECs, both incumbents and CLECs, told the commission they're being “harmed” by big telecom companies’ refusal to pay access charges. Also written in response to AT&T’s July 30 letter, the rural companies said withholding access payments is “unlawful self-help.” No regulatory body has even recognized the term “traffic pumping” and there’s nothing wrong with telephone companies developing ways to increase traffic, they said. It is “a common practice used by all LECs, including AT&T,” the letter said. For example, is it traffic pumping “when AT&T Mobility entered into an arrangement with American Idol to provide the service that allows viewers to vote for their favorite vocalist by text message or cell phone call,” they asked. “Rural carriers have been facing decreasing revenues for years, due in large part to line loss from declining rural populations, and from cellular telephone providers,” including AT&T Mobility, the companies said. “This country’s rural carriers have a choice,” the letter said: “They can offer new services to generate new telecom revenues or they can rely on higher USF subsidies. We believe it is in the best interest of the carriers and the American public if rural carriers attempt to generate more traffic.” The six companies are All American Telephone, Aventure Communications, Farmer’s Telephone of Riceville, Iowa, Great Lakes Communications, Superior Telephone Cooperative and Tekstar. EH