New Mexico has become the 36th state where Assurance Wireless will bring its Lifeline Assistance Program benefits. Assurance offers a wireless phone, 250 free voice minutes and 250 free text messages to eligible residents, parent company Sprint Nextel said Monday (http://xrl.us/bn3mag). There are 55,000 jobless New Mexicans, and 30 percent are below the poverty line, it said. Eligibility varies by state, according to Assurance Wireless, which said people in New Mexico can apply if eligible for other programs including Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, General Assistance, Federal Public Housing Assistance or the national free lunch program. Applicants can also demonstrate low income other ways, it said. The federal USF supports Assurance’s services.
Dell Telephone Cooperative will have to provide more information if it wants a waiver of several USF rules, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a letter Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bn2tvg). Bureau Chief Julie Veach posed 11 questions requesting additional details on employee salaries, marketable securities, life insurance and patronage refunds. “The Bureau needs to better understand Dell’s operations” to determine whether “good cause” exists to grant the waivers, it said. The West Texas co-op seeks a waiver of the $250 per line per month cap, the rule limiting reimbursable capital and operating expenses applied to high-cost loop support (HCLS), and rules limiting recovery of corporate operations expenses applied to HCLS and interstate common line support (CD July 12 p7).
Arguing the FCC lacks statutory authority to transition intercarrier compensation (ICC) rates to zero, ILEC intervenors asked the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday to vacate the 2011 USF/ICC order in its entirety. But the court won’t decide the fate of the order anytime soon, as the FCC’s brief in support of the order isn’t due until spring, said attorney Greg Vogt, who represents the National Exchange Carrier Association and worked on the brief. Until then, “the FCC’s order is effective and it’s moving onward and it’s harming rural telephone companies and their customers right now,” he said. Another telecom lawyer and an executive told us the rules are hurting ILECs, and will continue to for at least another year, until the 10th Circuit decides the case.
Opening briefs were due Monday in the Supreme Court case Arlington, Texas, et al. v. FCC, which will take a hard look at the Chevron doctrine and federal agencies’ ability to determine their jurisdiction. The court took up the question Oct. 5, raising questions about how the FCC exerts its authority (CD Oct 12 p1). Petitioners include the city of Arlington and San Antonio, Texas, Los Angeles, San Diego and the Texas Coalition for Utilities Issues. The petitioners have attracted significant support among state advocates. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners adopted a resolution Nov. 13 in support of the petitioners (CD Nov 14 p5) and NARUC is now one among many state advocates speaking up.
Efforts to expand broadband adoption in Dickey Rural telco’s rural service area are “being jeopardized” by USF and intercarrier compensation reforms that have “significantly and surprisingly curtailed the amount of high cost universal service support that DRTC reasonably expected to receive,” the telco told FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and aides to commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel, an ex parte filing said. The commission’s elimination of Safety Net Additive support is of particular concern, causing a loss of $1.68 million over the next five years, Dickey said. The North Dakota telco offers free Internet classes to its customers to encourage broadband adoption, and participates in the Rural PC Project, a joint project with NTCA and Microsoft, to provide affordable computers to rural customers, it said. But the telco may have to limit these efforts to expand broadband adoption because of cuts in USF, it said. “Due to the FCC’s extremely onerous waiver process and uncertainty regarding any favorable outcome, there is no viable avenue by which to obtain any relief,” the company said.
In an otherwise routine order Friday clarifying some requirements of the November 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation order and tweaking others, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel issued a separate statement suggesting simplifications to the “extremely” complex reforms. She worries that the complexity of the order, and the benchmarks that shift annually, could make life difficult for telcos that want to invest in their networks. “I fear that this complexity can deny rural carriers dependent on them the certainty they need to confidently invest in their network infrastructure,” Rosenworcel wrote. “So when opportunities arise to simplify our rules in a manner that is fiscally sound, good for investment, and good for rural consumers -- I think we should seize them."
The FCC should deny attempts to rescind the Tribal Government Engagement Obligation Provisions developed during the agency’s work on USF reform, the National Broadband Plan and the Connect America Fund, the National Congress of American Indians of the U.S. (NCAI) said Tuesday in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnznyn). The filing occurred after the NCAI adopted a resolution Oct. 26 encouraging the FCC to uphold the Tribal Engagement Provisions, which the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs developed in connection with the Wireline and Wireless bureaus (http://xrl.us/bnznyt). The FCC developed the provisions “with the intent of improving the deployment of telecommunications services on tribal lands,” NCAI President Jefferson Keel said in the filing. The NCAI grew concerned after USTelecom filed a petition that requested reconsideration and clarification of the provisions. NCAI, Native Public Media, the Gila River Indian Community and Gila River Telecommunications filed replies in opposition to the USTelecom petition (CD Sept 28 p6). “Any rescission of the Tribal Engagement Provisions would be an unfortunate set-back in the progress needed to bring digital communications to this country’s least connected peoples and lands,” Keel said Tuesday in the NCAI filing.
BALTIMORE -- State regulators are confronting an increasingly tortured relationship with the FCC, creating a task force to address it Monday at the NARUC meeting. It consists of seven commissioners and is already official and active. Meanwhile, two NARUC resolutions directly address the fractured FCC relationship, as was expected (CD Nov 2 p12), and NARUC adopted both resolutions as policy Tuesday after they advanced through the telecom subcommittee and committee. One urges FCC referral to the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service as well as to the Federal-State Joint Board on Jurisdictional Separations on major decisions, and another addresses a pending Supreme Court case on the Chevron doctrine, looking at the risk of federal overreach of authority.
The FCC gave ILECs a “five year competitive head start” when it gave them an exclusive five-year right to Phase I Connect America Fund funds for broadband deployment, and an exclusive right of first refusal to obtain CAF funds in Phase II, CLECs and other challengers argued in briefs filed last week. They're challenging the FCC’s USF/intercarrier compensation order in the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The commission’s “disparate treatment” of ILECs and CLECs in distribution of USF support violates its own “competitive neutrality” principle that support mechanisms “neither unfairly advantage nor disadvantage one provider over another,” they said.
The FCC mass-media agenda may be light in 2013, compared with work on USF and spectrum issues that will take up much of the eighth floor’s and many bureaus’ and offices’ attention, commission and industry officials predicted in interviews last week. They said Media Bureau staff may find the new year sharpens their focus on spectrum, with Chairman Julius Genachowski hoping to finish an order for the voluntary incentive auction by the end of next year. He would need rules for how to change the channels of stations that don’t agree to sell all or some of their frequencies.