One part of the effort to revamp the USF and intercarrier compensation system will examine and learn from the actions that states have taken to reduce intrastate access rates, said Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett on the FCC’s blog. By taking actions to revamp the rates, emphasizes further the FCC’s goal of modernizing the intercarrier compensation system for broadband, reducing incentives for regulatory “gamesmanship” and paving the way to lower long distance and wireless rates for consumers, she said. Gillett noted that Tennessee recently passed a law (CD Mar 21 p7) that will gradually reduce intrastate rates to interstate levels, and Washington state recently required CenturyLink to reduce its intrastate access rates to Qwest’s levels as a condition of the companies’ merger approval. Tennessee and Washington joined more than a dozen states, including Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska and Texas, that are “leaders on ICC reform,” she said. She urged other states to take similar action, saying revamping USF and ICC requires cooperation between the FCC and the states.

The FCC should give Alaska a separate “transition path” for Universal Service Fund reform, General Communication said in comments posted to dockets 10-90, 09-51, 07-135, 05-337, 01-92, 96-45 and 03-109. “Alaska’s telecommunications networks are like none other in the country, and face challenges of distance, climate and supporting infrastructure unlike anywhere else in the United States,” General Communication said. Despite the company’s “substantial rural wireless deployments in 2009 and 2010, much of rural Alaska is still waiting to receive the 2G mobile voice services that the rest of the country has enjoyed for over a decade,” General Communication said. The National Broadband Plan recommended that the commission focus on broadband speed of 4 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, but “those objectives will never be achieved in Alaska without hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment,” General Communication said. Only “a fraction of Alaska has access to broadband with maximum advertised speeds of 3-6 Mbps for downloads and .786-1.5 Mbps for uploads,” the company said. “At a time when all indications show that achieving the Commission’s broadband objectives in Alaska will require several hundred million dollars in support just for capital investments, let alone operating costs, the interim proposals for both ILEC and CETC support would slash support for Alaskan telecommunications and broadband deployment,” General Communication said. If the FCC adopts all of the proposals for USF reform in its rulemaking notice, Alaska would lose about 75 percent of its universal service support by 2016, General Communication said. “Meanwhile, because of the way that the proposed interim Connect America Fund and Mobility Fund would be structured, virtually no funds from those new mechanisms can be expected to support Alaska telecommunications and broadband deployment services,” General Communication said. “Rural Alaska will never win a nationwide reverse auction pegged at supporting the lowest dollar per user deployments because Rural Alaska is both high cost to serve especially to connect over the middle mile and has extremely small population centers.” The better course is to preserve “existing support” for all eligible telecommunications carriers and high-cost programs on Tribal Lands “during the interim, and then move directly to a long term (not first phase) reformed Connect America Fund ('CAF'), as long as it can be tailored to Alaska’s unique challenges,” General Communication said.

Public safety spending on 700 MHz D-block lobbying more than quadrupled in Q1 2011 compared to the same quarter last year, according to Q1 lobbying reports. The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials spent $80,563, 303 percent more than what the group spent in Q1 2010 and 66 percent more than Q4 2010. Meanwhile, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association spent nearly five times what it did last year, and NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said she expects the association of small rural telcos to continue spending at that level.

The FCC’s proposal to revamp the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation apparently could benefit some states while hurting others, according to comments in the proceeding. But states in general supported retaining and enhancing a state role in any rewrite. The FCC is expected to complete some of the USF overhaul by late summer (see separate report in this issue).

The FCC is on track to complete part of Universal Service Fund overhaul by late summer, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said Tuesday during a taping of C-SPAN’s The Communicators, scheduled to air over the weekend. Clyburn also said she has not prejudged AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile, a deal on which the companies are expected to formally seek commission approval in filings Thursday.

With less than four months to go before an FCC-promised deadline for Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms, industry appears to be divided on how to fix the system. The American Cable Association, for instance, said its “diverse and interested membership” meant the association “has had to navigate and balance strongly competing interests, while ensuring any policy proposals are in the public interest.” The FCC’s proposed rewrites at least “provide a good starting point to bring broadband to unserved areas, and, through refinements and targeted rebalancing, there is the potential to adopt reforms this year to reorient the High-Cost fund to improve efficiency and achieve universal broadband service,” ACA said in its comments. All comments were posted to dockets 10-90, 09-51, 07-135, 05-337, 01-92, 96-45 and 03-109.

Better data and accuracy is needed as the National Broadband Map continues to evolve, panelists said at a Broadband Breakfast Club briefing Tuesday. Better broadband data is key to national policies as well as support of ongoing broadband initiatives at the state and local level, they said.

The FCC should “immediately” tackle phantom traffic and traffic pumping but should provide “careful transitions” as it reforms the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regimes with “great care,” USTelecom said in comments posted to dockets 10-90, 09-51, 07-135, 05-337, 01-92, 96-45 and 03-109. “Until targeted universal service support provides sufficient explicit funding for networks in high-cost areas, any mandated rate reductions must be coupled with a reasonable opportunity for providers to replace the revenues lost … through a combination of increased retail rate flexibility and a supplement fund,” USTelecom said. USTelecom is leading talks to try to come up with an industry-wide reform. But the commission has made clear that it wants to move to orders on USF and intercarrier comp distribution by the end of the summer. “Intercarrier compensation reform must be accomplished by providing opportunities for carriers to replace lost revenues in order to allow the continuation of support for networks, particularly those in high-cost rural areas,” USTelecom said in Monday’s comments.

The FCC’s USF proposal would endanger Utah’s “well-regulated” USF program, said the Utah Public Service Commission and the Utah Division of Public Utilities in a filing. By cutting support for companies that have built infrastructure in reliance on federal support, the proposal will injure Utah’s rural consumers, threaten the state’s USF and imperil Utah’s rural telecom companies, the filing said. Additionally, the rulemaking represents an effective abandonment, at least in the near term, of the goal of ensuring quality services at just, reasonable and affordable rates for all consumers because it would concentrate limited resources away from many companies that can’t provide this service in the absence of support, the filing said. At a minimum, the FCC should continue providing support for the duration of companies’ indebtedness incurred, it said.

It’s “clearly inequitable” that phone companies get high-cost support from the Universal Service Fund in areas where cable operators Allegiance Communications and Metrocast have systems, their executives told an aide to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Thursday filing recounted. The American Cable Association, of which the companies are members, said in the filing that ACA wants the commission to focus on supporting broadband in unserved areas. That’s as the agency seeks to use USF money to fund broadband, in the Connect America Fund, said the filing in docket 10-90.