NTIA Formulating Administration Posture on USF Overhaul
FARMINGTON, Pa. -- The NTIA has convened a working group to formulate the Obama administration’s position on pending Universal Service Fund changes, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said at an FCBA conference over the weekend: “The issue is important enough that the White House should have its own position on that.” The work group is led by John Morabito, head of the NTIA Office of Policy Analysis & Development, Strickling told us Saturday.
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Morabito is a former FCC staffer who was a senior policy advisor to NTIA on the agency’s broadband grants. He’s now with NTIA’s Office of Policy Analysis & Development. Before joining the agency, he was a lobbyist with Global Crossing, Qwest and Comcast. Trained as an economist at Vassar College, he has a law degree from the University of Maryland.
Morabito’s group, which NTIA has dubbed “a workstream,” includes staff from the Rural Utilities Service, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Counsel, NTIA Deputy Administrator Anna Gomez told us Monday. It’s not clear what role, if any, NTIA will play in the ongoing FCC proceeding on universal service. It’s more likely that the NTIA will weigh in with ex parte meetings while the commission deliberates, two government officials told us. NTIA has weighed in formally on such subjects as privacy and net neutrality. “We're not there yet,” Gomez said.
The clock is ticking. The commission has promised to issue orders on an overhaul of universal service by the end of the summer. Two commissioners and several staffers made clear at the weekend’s FCBA conference that the priorities haven’t changed. “If we don’t get it done this time … it'll be a long time coming,” Commissioner Michael Copps said. Copps reiterated his call for nationwide hearings so that industry thinks that “golly, these guys are really going to do this."
"This is the optimal time,” Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said Saturday. “You've got everybody recognizing that we need to modernize.” Rick Kaplan, aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski, was asked Saturday whether he thought the USF overhaul would be complete by the close of summer. He said he didn’t want to commit to that deadline, but added, “I think 2011 is the year.”