Staff ‘Hard at Work’ on USF, Intercarrier Comp Order, Spokesman Says
The FCC Wireline Bureau is “hard at work” on drafting an order reforming the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regimes, an FCC spokesman told us Tuesday. Wireline staffers are hoping to have a draft to Zac Katz, Chairman Julius Genachowski’s adviser, by early July, an FCC official and a telco lobbyist told us. Some telco lobbyists raised concerns that the FCC didn’t have a plan of its own after Genachowski went to Omaha and challenged “stakeholders” to help him solve the universal service/intercarrier comp “Rubik’s cube” (CD May 20 p1). The commission spokesman rebuffed those suggestions: “FCC staff is hard at work drafting an order,” he said in an email Tuesday.
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Telco officials continue to hold weekly meetings to try to come up with an industry-wide reform package. There are still fundamental disagreements over how long the reforms’ transitions should be, what role satellite and wireless will play in the reforms and how to deal with VoIP traffic (CD May 27 p3).
While the talks continue, though, individual sectors have been making their separate cases. The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association has been making the rounds at the FCC over the last several days, pitching its plan for a three-to-five year transition on the intercarrier comp side, NTCA Vice President Mike Romano told us Tuesday. Under NTCA’s plan, the commission would lower companies’ intrastate rates to the same level as their interstate rates over the next two-to-five years, Romano said. “We think that’s a good point at which to stop and take a temperature check,” he said. The transition would also require an access recovery mechanism, Romano said.
AT&T and Verizon have been arguing for a relatively short transition to an all IP-world of about three years, several telco lobbyists have told us. But both the big companies want “to go to an awfully low rate awfully fast,” Romano said. NTCA’s plan is similar to one floated by mid-sized carriers back in 2005, “when the question of broadband wasn’t even on the horizon,” he said. If anything, that demonstrates that the commission should be careful about locking itself into a long-term regulatory regime, Romano said.
In separate meetings, Free Conferencing leaders pressed their case with Wireline staff last week, the company said in an ex parte notice released Tuesday. The company reiterated its argument for a two-tiered, revenue-sharing “trigger” as a “step in the right direction, a good marker.” Of the three proposals for second-tier “triggers” -- minute of use caps, traffic ratios or high-volume access tariffs -- the tariffs would work best, Free Conferencing executives said. The caps would be “difficult to police” and there would be no parallel cap for urban rates, Free Conferencing officials said. The traffic ratios are also difficult to police and, since there is no floor, “RLEC rates would drop below urban LEC rates,” the executives claimed. The high-volume access tariffs, however, would be “self-policing” since “each carrier is aware of the traffic it sends to the RLEC” and has already obtained “FCC approval and [is] in use in multiple rural service areas,” Free Conferencing executives said.