Cuts in Lifeline Program Raise Bigger Concerns, CAC Members Say

Jonathan Lechter, Lifeline team leader in the Wireline Bureau, presented charts saying the program is getting smaller as the FCC cracks down on abuse. The commission has cut $213 million from the program as a result of Lifeline “reform,” he said. The FCC hopes to save $2 billion through 2014, “and it appears that we're on track to that,” he said. The FCC and the Universal Service Administrative Co. reviewed more than 18.8 million records and eliminated 1.5 million duplicate subscriptions, he noted.

CAC Chairman Debra Berlyn said of the sharp drop in Lifeline enrollment: “For some of us that’s not such a great thing to see. We do hope that members of Congress also see that … it’s not such a great thing that Lifeline numbers go down. We do want to reduce fraud and abuse, but we also want to recognize the fact that it’s undersubscribed.” Lifeline “is not reaching all of the people who are in true need,” she said.

"I heard you describe a lot about how you're going after fraud, making sure there are no duplicates,” said Lise Hamlin, representing the Hearing Loss Association of America on CAC. “I didn’t hear anything about … how you're reaching out to people who actually are eligible and should get this service.” The FCC has done public service announcements on Lifeline and is “always looking” for ways to make sure those who need the program know it is available, Lechter replied. “That’s definitely a priority here.”

The FCC should follow up with those who are kicked out of the program and also needs to provide data “on what’s working and what is not working” as a Lifeline broadband pilot program gets underway, said CAC member Mitsuko Herrera, with the Montgomery County, Md., Office of Cable and Broadband Services. “If a customer is eligible and they lose their support for a month they can just sign right back up again with their proof of eligibility,” Lechter responded. “It’s not like they're barred from the program.”

Commissioner Ajit Pai stopped by the meeting to call on the FCC to create an online dashboard on consumer complaints. A dashboard would be helpful to the public and force the FCC to be more accountable, Pai said.

"If you want to know how many complaints have been filed at the FCC in various categories it’s not the easiest thing to figure out that information,” Pai said. “It also isn’t easy to figure out what the FCC’s response rate is with respect to processing complaints. I thought it would be kind of helpful to have a dashboard like some state governments have where it would list all the different categories of complaints that have been filed at the FCC, [Telephone Consumer Protection Act], bill shock, cramming, and those sorts of things, and you could sort of see by the metrics … that the FCC has acted upon this many complaints, this many within one year.” A dashboard “would incentivize us to act more quickly,” he said. “Not that we don’t do a good job already, but just to say it always helps to have the public looking over our shoulders.”

Pai also said he wanted to raise the level of awareness of the importance of the telephone Internet Protocol transition for consumers. The transition has received widespread industry comment, “but I found by and large, at least in my own personal experience, that consumers either don’t know much about the IP transition or aren’t clear about what the transition might mean for them,” he said. Pai said he asked his parents. “They had no idea,” he said. “To them, they're agnostic as to the technology they're using. They just think I pick up a phone, whether it’s a landline phone or a wireless phone. … They just expect it all to work. They don’t really think about the distinction in services.” Pai said it’s important “to get a consumer perspective as well, just to educate consumers on the IP transition means, what their concerns might be.” As pilots are rolled out, consumers can “let us know what’s going well and what isn’t going well,” he said.

CAC member Claude Stout, executive director at Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, said the IP transition has big implications for those with hearing loss. “Make sure that you're aware of addressing accessibility needs … as we transition to a fully IP environment,” he said: AT&T is “doing some trials to see how the IP transition will affect the needs of our community, and I think that’s a wonderful idea. Testing the technology that we're currently using and that we will be using in the near future throughout those trials will, I think, help the FCC to determine how to either make new regulations or continue regulations that apply to the current system.”

"It’s certainly on our radar,” Pai replied. “There are so many dimensions to the IP transition when it comes to those in the disability community. I hope I speak for my colleagues when I say that issue is front and center for us.”

Rather than establishing a complaint dashboard the FCC would do more good by making complaint data more easily available for analysis, said CAC member Art Neill, from New Media Rights. “Right now … it shows up in PDF reports, which is not really usable in any kind of way in terms of the data itself,” he said. “The raw data, I guess, is really important to present in a machine readable format.”

Rebekah Goodheart, deputy director of the FCC Technology Policy Transition Task Force, told CAC in a separate presentation the group is making real progress. Goodheart is leaving the task force to become an advisor to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. “If there is something you would like to respond to or provide a different point of view, we want to hear it,” Goodheart said. “We have had a lot of ex partes. We also have had suggestions for academics and others that we should affirmatively reach out to and talk to. We've done that as well. If there are other people that we should be reaching out to we would love to hear that as well.” Goodheart reassured CAC that consumer protection will be an FCC focus throughout the IP transition.

Edward Smith, chief of staff of the FCC Incentive Auction Task Force, reassured CAC that the incentive auction of broadcast spectrum won’t affect how consumers watch TV. “We are statutorily bound to protect [broadcasters], to exercise all reasonable efforts to protect their service areas and their populations served,” he said. “One of our real priorities here is that we believe that coming out of the auction the broadcast industry in the U.S. will continue, will continue to be strong and vibrant."

The CAC created four working groups. The Broadband working group plans to focus on adoption and access issues, and metrics related to the National Broadband Plan to help determine if the plan is actually working, officials said. The working group will also deal with IP transition issues, such as how the USF applies to new technologies; network resiliency; consumer education; and how laws and regulations applying to previous technologies will affect consumers in the future, officials said. Julie Kearney, vice president-regulatory affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association, said she wants to make sure “we don’t duplicate the efforts” of the FCC’s Technology Transitions Policy Task Force, which has IP transition issues at its focus.

The Health working group will make recommendations to the CAC related to FCC initiatives on consumer health. Topics of focus, said group member Robert Jarrin, Qualcomm senior director-government affairs, include: wireless test beds; the use of Medicaid as an eligibility criteria for the Lifeline program; future broadband constraints; healthcare eligibility issues; and the rural health broadband program.

The Disability working group, focused on speech, hearing or visual disabilities that impact the FCC’s work, will focus on the Communications and Video Accessibility Act, and various issues related to speech-to-speech technology, the Telecommunications Relay Service, and IP Captioned Telephone Service, said group member Hearing Loss Association of America’s Hamlin.

The Universal Service working group will continue work from last term, said Cecilia Garcia, executive director of the Benton Foundation. The focus will be Lifeline, and on making sure the group is paying “close attention” as the FCC’s reform measures play out in the next 12-18 months, she said. The working group will take particular notice of how Lifeline is affected by the broader IP transition, she said: “We really want to pay attention to underserved communities and how they fare in the IP transition.”