Former FCC members disagree about how fast the commission should be pushing for action on the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum. Former agency heads and ex-commissioners from both parties agreed Wednesday that Wireless Bureau staff have been impeded by the lack of a full commission, and lack of clear direction from the top. The ex-members also disagreed on whether the auction is the most complex task the agency has ever taken on, in a Q-and-A hosted by Communications Daily.
The Texas Public Utility Commission granted a motion for dismissal that several telcos requested in May. These various companies requested to be dismissed from a PUC rate proceeding due to what was then a pending potential law that would remove the PUC’s rate oversight relevant to their categorization. They argued it would be a waste to force them to continue with the proceeding if Texas Senate Bill 583 became law (CD June 7 p11). These companies alerted the PUC that Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed that bill into law June 14, and a PUC administrative law judge “agrees that the issue raised by the USF Coalition need not be addressed at this time and is not part of this Order,” according to the Friday PUC order (http://bit.ly/12en3bZ). “Therefore, the motion to dismiss is granted and Big Bend Telephone Company, Eastex Telephone Cooperative, Inc., Valley Telephone Cooperative, Inc., and the Parties in the Alenco Group, the Hill Country Group, and the Ganado Group are dismissed from this proceeding.”
Companies from across the telecom industry urged the FCC last week to reform its rules for assessing regulatory fees. Commenters said change is necessary to ensure no provider is at a competitive disadvantage. An NPRM last month sought comment on several reforms, including changes to the Interstate Telecommunications Service Providers fee category, reallocation of full-time equivalent (FTE) employee fees, and limitations on regulatory fee increases (http://bit.ly/13YxqAR).
Wireless carriers are asking that customer proprietary network information requirements only apply to mobile devices “if a carrier directed or caused CPNI to be on a mobile device and ... the carrier has access to that CPNI,” said an FCC filing. Commissioner Ajit Pai, meanwhile, has indicated he will dissent unless major changes are made to the CPNI order before Thursday’s meeting where it’s scheduled for a vote, industry and agency officials said.
The second edition of “Digital Crossroads” is available for pre-order on Amazon (http://amzn.to/10uNBrc). Its authors, Dean Philip Weiser of the University of Colorado Law School, and Wilmer Hale partner Jonathan Nuechterlein, spoke at the American Enterprise Institute Tuesday (http://bit.ly/10uO90g) on changes they made for the new edition of their book, first published in 2004. The authors limited the amount of time spent discussing the increasingly “antiquated” and “obsolete” Telecom Act of 1996, they said, and gave considerable focus to the IP transition and the spectrum issues. Weiser gave the FCC credit for reorienting the USF program to focus on broadband, and on fixing the program to stop producing new wireless carriers in areas that already had wireless service. The big challenge, Weiser said, is whether it’s economical to keep wireline connections in areas that are more remote, he said. Any decision to let go of legacy networks is “one of the painful implementation challenges” the industry will face, he said. In the IP transition, the FCC will have a big role ensuring non-economic, social policy objectives are met, Nuechterlein said. “I am much more skeptical” about the FCC’s role in economic issues such as the need for price regulation, interconnection and leasing obligations, he said.
Commenters urged the FCC to correct “obvious” errors with the Alaskan capital expenditure coefficient in the agency’s quantile regression model, in comments filed Monday. The Matanuska Telephone Association asked the commission in May to strike the use of the negative coefficient. “It is not clear why the Quantile Regression Model yielded a negative coefficient for Alaska, but the stark reality is that it is more expensive to build network in Alaska than in the Lower 48, not less,” General Communication Inc. said (http://bit.ly/15hiFGZ). GCI urged the commission to grant the petition. In so doing, the agency “should not be under any illusion” that this would address “even a significant minority” of the shortcomings of the USF reform rules with respect to Alaska, said the company. Several factors, including unique geography and topography, low population density and harsh climate, contribute to the high costs faced by Alaskan carriers, said the Arctic Slope Telephone Association Cooperative and Copper Valley Telephone Cooperative (http://bit.ly/15hj9Nv). “While we understand that the WCB staff is working to produce a new result for 2014, it is not acceptable to penalize Alaska carriers during the entirety of 2013 while these data errors are being corrected.” If the quantile regression analysis is to be used at all, said NTCA, the commission must “redouble efforts” to ensure that “its inputs are accurate and its outcomes promote the provision of specific, sufficient and predictable high-cost support” (http://bit.ly/10uMZ4T). The negative coefficient for Alaska is a “clear error,” but other erroneous outcomes based on faulty data “may not be as immediately clear,” said the association. It urged the commission to scrub and scrutinize its inputs. The Alaskan costs were also the topic of a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday. (See related report above in this issue.)
Julie Kitka, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, traveled more than 5,500 miles to get to a hearing on Capitol Hill on the effect of USF reforms on tribal areas. So did Steve Merriam, CEO of an Alaskan telephone cooperative. Alfred LaPaz of the Mescalero Apache Tribe traveled 2,800 miles. Which is why it’s “beyond my imagination,” said Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, that FCC officials weren’t willing to “travel the mile and a half up the road” to “answer the questions that I would like to ask them.”
FCC Chairman nominee Tom Wheeler outlined his perspectives and priorities Tuesday on the incentive auction and a host of other policy issues facing the commission at his nomination hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. Wheeler said he would adhere to three governing policies to if confirmed: Consumer protection, competition and predictability. Wheeler said the “ability to know what the rules are, whether the rule is right or wrong ... is far more of an economic incentive.” Wheeler also faced pointed questions from committee members about his views on transaction reviews, USF reform, E-rate modernization, federal spectrum sharing, retransmission consent and net neutrality.
The U.S. wireless industry is once again becoming a duopoly, dominated by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, the Competitive Carriers Association said in response to a May 17 notice from the FCC Wireless Bureau asking for comments as staff write their annual wireless competition report. Verizon Wireless and AT&T disagreed. At issue is whether the upcoming report will be the fourth in a row in which the FCC declines to find that the wireless market is effectively competitive.
South Park Telephone Co. is “exactly the type of rural carrier that Universal Service funding was designed to support,” the Colorado Public Utilities Commission told the FCC in a letter Friday supporting the carrier’s request for waiver of various USF rules (http://bit.ly/ZYjZA9). The Colorado carrier serves a low-density, mountainous area of about 600 square miles (CD Dec 5 p14). “It is our understanding that the Commission has granted USF waivers to both Accipiter and Allband in the past where similar deployment challenges and high costs existed,” the PUC wrote. “We are mindful of the Commission’s desire to reduce the USF fund size and to transition funding in support of broadband, but hope that the Commission reaches the same conclusion after a full review of its petition and supporting materials filed by SPT.”