It’s not clear how much the FCC will use the definitions it must provide the NTIA -- on what “broadband,” “open access” and “unserved” and “underserved” areas are -- to make broader decisions on future commission policy, commission and industry officials said Tuesday. The commission is required to act quickly, making major policy calls difficult. “The pragmatist in me says it would be difficult to do anything beyond” current policies, said an industry lawyer. “There isn’t a whole lot of time and those issues would be very contentious, slowing the process down.”
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
Comparing the U.S. to other countries on broadband availability will be the FCC’s toughest task as the agency implements the Broadband Data Improvement Act, telecom executives and researchers said in comments at the commission Friday. Many international reports miss key variables needed to draw accurate conclusions, they said. Although most comments focused broadly on how to satisfy Congress’ goals in the act, some groups urged the FCC to focus on special interest areas where they said information is lacking.
The FCC will likely get lengthy input on a vast array of controversial telecom issues, as it attempts to develop a national broadband plan, said industry officials we polled for reaction Thursday. In a 52-page notice of inquiry released Wednesday (CD April 9 p1), the FCC asks questions on universal service reform, open networks and nondiscrimination, the role of competition, how to define broadband, and several other big issues. The FCC is required under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to deliver its national broadband plan to Congress by Feb. 17.
The FCC opened a rulemaking to revamp universal service high-cost support for non-rural carriers. In a notice of inquiry adopted 3-0 Tuesday and released Wednesday, the FCC asked how it should respond to a 2005 remand by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2005, the court called unlawful the FCC’s current non-rural rules, which address carriers like Qwest that serve high-cost areas with too many lines to be considered “rural” by the statutory definition.
The FCC 8th Floor hoped to release a notice of inquiry on universal service high-cost support for non-rural carriers by late Tuesday, an FCC official told us, but it hadn’t done so at our deadline. Tuesday afternoon, the item was still waiting for votes, the official said. The notice includes a laundry list of questions asking how the FCC should respond to a 2005 remand by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (CD April 7 p9). In order to avoid a court-imposed deadline, the FCC agreed with state and carrier petitioners to a timeline whereby the agency would issue the NOI by Wednesday, a further notice by Dec. 15, and a final order by April 16, 2010.
A petition to stop prerecorded calls to consumers who port landline numbers to wireless was denounced by creditors, phone companies and others involved in automated messaging. In comments in an FCC rulemaking, they said a customer who has consented to calls on a landline number probably still wants them after cutting the cord. But consumer activists said cellphones are more private than wireless phones and deserve different treatment under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
The FCC is working on an American Sign Language video to help teach the deaf how to get 10-digit phone numbers for Internet-based telecom relay services, said a spokeswoman for the Consumer & Governmental Affairs bureau. The video will appear on the commission’s Web site, but the spokeswoman declined to say when. An FCC official told us the project is on the “front burner.” Consumer groups for the deaf have urged the commission to do more outreach. The groups say marketing-filled education efforts by TRS companies have confused consumers (CD March 30 p8). One of the groups, Telecommunications for Deaf and Hard of Hearing is “optimistic” that the FCC will finish the clips “within the next several weeks,” Executive Director Claude Stout said. “The videos will be extremely helpful as we would get the information neutrally from the FCC. Some providers are doing a good job producing their own video clips. But they also market their brand” relay services “as they explain how to get a 10-digit number or how to make an emergency call.”
Policymakers must focus more on spurring broadband adoption if they want to improve broadband penetration in the U.S., said Carly Fiorina, chair of the Technology Policy Institute, in a media briefing Tuesday. The former Hewlett Packard CEO advised the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and is considering a run for the U.S. Senate in California. The $7.2 billion broadband infrastructure program may not be as effective at improving penetration as the government hopes, Fiorina said. “Simply throwing money at technology doesn’t work,” she said. “You can spend a lot of money and not get a lot to show for it.” More attention must be paid to demand-side factors, she said. “It’s not quite as simple as, ‘If we build it, they will come,'” she said. “For technology to be deployed most effectively, the underlying processes and practices and habits have to change. Otherwise what you're doing is just adding a layer of complexity and expense on top of what already exists.” Congress specified only about $200 million of the stimulus money for spurring adoption, noted Scott Wallsten, a vice president with the institute. And the program focuses mostly on rural areas, even though the most severe adoption problems are in low-income urban areas, he said. Even if the program is effective at deploying broadband throughout the country, “you're not going to get much of a boost in broadband penetration at all,” he said. Fiorina applauded increased emphasis on technology in Washington, but warned that technology “is a place where the details matter” and “emotions can run high” when it’s tied to other issues like healthcare and education. Collecting objective research and analysis will be key to making good policy, she said.
Eight years after setting an “interim” freeze on jurisdictional separations, the FCC tentatively decided to extend its expiration date one more year to June 30, 2010. Separations, which is governed by the FCC’s Part 36 rules, is the process by which incumbent local exchange carriers allocate interstate and intrastate regulated costs. In a rulemaking notice issued late Friday, the FCC pledged to work with states to finish the long-delayed separations overhaul. The Copps FCC has already taken steps to increase states’ involvement in the process, said Brad Ramsay, general counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, in an interview.
There appeared to be little new in the more than 100 comments that flooded into the FCC this week about how to develop a comprehensive broadband strategy for rural parts of the U.S. The recommendations of the commission are expected to be given weight at NTIA and RUS as the agencies develop their respective broadband stimulus programs.