As policymakers look at reforms to the USF, they need to examine why so many people who are eligible for support don’t enroll in Lifeline and other programs, experts said Monday during an event hosted by Georgetown University's Center for Business and Public Policy. The session coincided with Monday's deadline for responding to the congressional USF working group's request for comments and proposals on USF reform.
Competitive Carriers Association membership is shrinking, but the remainder are hopeful about future spectrum auctions and policy calls that could mean the difference between life and death for many small players, CEO Tim Donovan said in an interview Thursday.
West Kentucky and Tennessee (WK&T) Telecommunications Cooperative CEO Karen Jackson-Furman and other witnesses plan to highlight for the House Small Business Committee their hopes for a restarted congressional working group’s bid for a USF legislative revamp (see 2507030051), according to written testimony released ahead of Wednesday's hearing on broadband deployment’s effect on rural entrepreneurs. Some urge lawmakers to continue addressing internet affordability as part of the USF revamp. Several of the witnesses also back Republicans’ bid to further ease permitting reviews of connectivity projects, including via the controversial American Broadband Deployment Act (see 2305240069). The House Small Business hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 2360 Rayburn.
The already-high USF contribution factor is expected to rise, based on a Friday filing at the FCC by the Universal Service Administrative Co. The factor is projected to increase from 36% in Q3 to 39.3% in Q4. Congressional leaders recently relaunched a bipartisan working group to study a USF legislative revamp (see 2508010051), but experts warned Monday that addressing USF won’t be easy.
The recently relaunched bipartisan congressional working group studying a USF legislative revamp is seeking a new round of stakeholder comments about how to proceed and has opened a portal for submissions, Senate Communications Subcommittee Chair Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said Friday. Meanwhile, the Digital Progress Institute said in a white paper Thursday that USF's current contribution mechanism is “unsustainable” and “horrendously inefficient.”
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) adopted two resolutions at its Summer Policy Summit in Boston this week, calling for enhanced federal-state collaboration on telecom policy, particularly in phone number management and universal service funding. NARUC’s telecom committee passed both Monday, and the full board of directors adopted them Wednesday.
The FCC avoided a potentially disastrous result when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the USF contribution factor in its Consumers’ Research decision last month (see 2507020049), HWG’s Chris Wright said during a practitioners panel that was part of an FCBA CLE Tuesday (see 2507150081). “If the case had gone the other way” it would have “called into question almost everything in the Communications Act,” said Wright, a former FCC general counsel.
Lawyers for the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society said Monday that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month upholding the USF was a clean win for the program and the FCC (see 2507020049). By rejecting the challenge -- brought by Consumers’ Research, a right-wing group -- SCOTUS lifted a cloud that has loomed over the USF for years, the lawyers said during an SHLB webinar.
Leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees who are spearheading the bipartisan congressional working group on a USF legislative revamp, which relaunched in June (see 2506120091), told us they plan to begin meeting again this month. But they said they feel less pressure to quickly reach an agreement on legislative recommendations since the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in Consumers’ Research v. FCC, which found that USF’s funding mechanism is constitutional (see 2506270054). Sens. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and John Thune, R-S.D., formed the working group in 2023 as Communications Subcommittee chairman and ranking member, respectively (see 2305110066).
Former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said Wednesday that while he has long been a critic of the USF, he was relieved that the U.S. Supreme Court last week didn’t overturn the program (see 2506270054). Cutting off support that USF recipients need would be “a terrible outcome,” O’Rielly said during a Broadband Breakfast webinar.