The FCC Wireline and Wireless bureaus “blatantly violated competitive neutrality” when they denied a USF waiver petition by Adak Eagle Enterprises and its subsidiary Windy City Cellular based on a promise by General Communications Inc. to serve Adak Island, the companies argued in an application for review Thursday. The bureaus last month rejected the request of the Alaskan carriers, finding they had “not shown good cause for a waiver,” and their plans to reduce costs failed to address, among other factors, “disproportionate executive compensation relative to the size of the companies” (CD July 17 p14). The companies had sought waivers of rules establishing a $250-per-line monthly cap on high-cost universal service support, arguing the island could lose voice service if not granted.
Telecom and other companies should retrain workers whose jobs are affected by technological change, much as AT&T has done for nearly 30 years, said the president emeritus of a telecom industry union. The job training alliance begun in 1986 between the telco and the Communications Workers of America has been fruitful in paying for employees to get extra education at both the secondary and university level, and benefitted companies too with increased staff loyalty, said Morton Bahr. In answering our question at a speech at a Washington temple and a follow-up interview, Bahr also said he supports changing the E-rate program to provide faster broadband to schools as a good use of USF money.
The FCC Wireline Bureau seeks comments on a Time Warner Cable petition to become an eligible telecom carrier in Maine for the sole purpose of providing wireless services supported by the USF’s Lifeline program (http://bit.ly/14oqu13). Comments are due Sept. 6, replies Sept. 23, said a bureau public notice.
The FCC should tread with care as it reviews the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s (USAC) finding that audio communication components of Cisco’s WebEx conferencing service are a telecommunications service under the 1996 Telecom Act (CD Aug 7 p17), said Free State Foundation President Randolph May in a Wednesday blog post (http://bit.ly/12ttp31). “It is only natural that USAC has an incentive to want to expand the services subject to USF contribution payments to the extent possible,” May said. “But if the effect of its decisions is to narrow the understanding of what constitutes an ‘information service,’ the consequences can be far-reaching. This is because the FCC would then have authority to regulate as telecommunications services previously unregulated information services."
Adak Eagle and Windy City Cellular met with FCC officials to emphasize the struggles of their service territory and why a waiver of certain FCC USF rules is justified. Adak CEO Larry Mayes expressed “how frustrating it was to deal with the commission on our waiver and the waiver process,” with costs exceeding half a million dollars, said an ex parte filing posted online Wednesday (http://bit.ly/16uu0FT). It described the geographical struggles associated with Adak Island and the operations of the company to provide service, from barge deliveries to the cost of flights to the island. The two company representatives described small rural companies like themselves as the “backbone” of the country and in need of USF support. All the cuts required to deal with the waiver process and meet deadlines have created potential safety risks, the filing said. The Wireline Bureau is seeking comment on Adak’s waiver petition, it said Wednesday in a public notice (http://bit.ly/11MV9nz). Comments are due Aug. 19.
Cisco representatives urged the FCC Wireline Bureau Thursday to review the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s (USAC) finding that audio communication components of Cisco’s WebEx conferencing service are a telecommunications service under the 1996 Telecom Act (http://bit.ly/1cGPtju). Designating those components as a telecommunications service would make a portion of WebEx revenue eligible for assessment for USF contributions (CD May 20 p6). Jeff Campbell, Cisco vice president-government affairs, and Cisco counsel Walter Anderson told the bureau staff that USAC improperly applied FCC precedents and failed to “accept WebEx’s reasonable unbundling of its revenues -- positions that commenters broadly support,” Cisco said in an ex parte filing. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision that The Conference Group lacked standing to challenge the FCC’s ruling that audio bridging software by InterCall must pay into the USF (CD July 3 p4) “has no bearing on the application of the InterCall Orders to WebEx’s service because the D.C. Circuit concluded only that The Conference Group and WebEx lacked standing to challenge the InterCall Orders, and the court did not reach the merits of the parties’ challenge to the InterCall Orders,” Cisco said.
Frontier Communications sought reconsideration of the FCC Wireline Bureau’s July 1 order on its waiver petition on USF rules. The bureau had declined Frontier’s request to use a weighted average of local rates to determine if local rates meet the FCC’s rate floor requirement. Frontier will “bear losses of high-cost support contrary to the purpose of the rule, given the history of West Virginia local rate setting and Frontier’s high basic flat-rate local plan, and to the detriment of Frontier’s customers in West Virginia,” the telco said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1eqqhMg), calling the bureau’s decision flawed. It described and defended its many calling plans in West Virginia and criticized the FCC’s interpretation of the setup.
Republicans and Democrats from the House Commerce Committee requested information from the FCC on the agency’s USF programs. They sent a letter Friday (http://1.usa.gov/13HZd57) and specified that the information requested is an update to previous requests from July 2012, reflecting reforms to the FCC programs. The agency should send them a state-by-state list of how the funds were disbursed throughout the high-cost and low-income programs in 2010, 2011 and 2012 as well as a list of states that have their own USFs and their purposes, the letter said. It also wants a state-by-state list of the eligible telecom carriers that receive Lifeline support and a history of the FCC’s decision-making in moving forward with some of the reforms. Other requests touch on what companies received certain levels of high-cost support and how many Lifeline subscribers were de-enrolled as part of the FCC’s recertification process last year. The letter was signed by Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.; Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore.; and Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. The letter “continues a standing bipartisan request to the FCC for data to aid the committee in its oversight of the fund, prevent waste, fraud and abuse, and ensure the taxpayers are getting the most benefit for every USF dollar,” said Upton and Walden in a statement. The request for data “ensures that the committee has the most up-to-date performance information so that Universal Service subsidies can be maximized to spur further broadband growth in critical areas of the United States,” Eshoo added.
"Students are the change agent” when it comes to encouraging broadband adoption throughout the country, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told the Consumer Advisory Committee Friday. Rosenworcel made an appearance to discuss the commission’s E-rate initiative and the need to update commission policies to encourage more Internet capacity in schools. Agency officials emphasized the importance of connectivity at home, and committee members stressed that affordability and adoptions are also big concerns.
Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said the FCC’s spectrum incentive auction “may slide into 2015,” in an interview for C-SPAN’s The Communicators scheduled to be aired over the weekend. “I'm totally fine with it happening in 2014,” said Pryor, “but I'm hearing rumors that it may not be ready by 2014.” This year both acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn and former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said publicly that the commission is “on track” to run the spectrum incentive auction in 2014 (CD March 13 p1 and CD May 22 p1). The FCC had no comment Friday.