Joint Board’s State Members Urge FCC to Scrap Auctions
The FCC “should abandon” its proposal for reverse auctions and instead create three new, separate funds to overhaul the universal service system, state members of the Joint Board on Universal Service told the commission in comments posted late Monday. The state members said the three new funds should be: (1) A “provider of last resort” fund to be “a comprehensive cost-based support mechanism to provide sufficient support to carriers that accept provider-of-last resort duties, adjusted for broadband services. (2) A “mobility fund” that would provide “grants to finance the building of wireless towers in areas the FCC designates as under-served or unserved by wireless broadband.” (3) A “wireline broadband fund” that would award grants “to finance broadband wireline facilities in areas the FCC designates as under-served or unserved by wireline broadband.” The comments were posted to docket 10-90.
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The state members’ comments are a boon to rural providers who have been fighting a rear-guard action against reverse auctions and to preserve carrier of last resort mechanisms. It’s a blow to those rural carriers who had argued that universal service reform ought to be referred to the Joint Board for further study. As late as last week, an executive with U.S. Cellular told an FCC workshop that he thought Univeral Service Fund reform would “blow up” without proper authorization from the Joint Board (CD April 26 p2).
The state members make clear they see an important role for the states in USF reform. An earlier draft of the state members’ comments led with a discussion of the states’ role and criticized the FCC for not referring the matter to the Joint Board, government officials told us. But state commissioners had the language toned down and moved further back in the document, they said. “It’s only fair to say that, while I can make a case that maybe we would have loved this in a referral, there really has been a lot of outreach from this FCC,” Vermont Public Service Board member John Burke said. He declined to comment on whether the language was toned down. State members have been critical of the FCC’s process in the past, most recently in the commission’s Lifeline reforms proceedings.
The state members’ comments are at least an implicit endorsement of the FCC’s ambitious timetable for USF and intercarrier compensation reform, an official of that agency said. The commission scheduled its first field hearing on USF and intercarrier compensation reforms for Omaha, Neb., on May 18. That hearing will focus on the specific role of the states in the ongoing reform. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.
In their comments, state members also recommended: (1) Classifying VoIP calls as a telecom service. (2) Creating a contribution factor across interstate and intrastate rates. (3) A uniform rate, but not zero, for intercarrier compensation (4) Capping the USF at $4.2 billion but monitoring it to make sure that it’s adequately meeting the nation’s broadband needs.