Representatives of the Western Telecommunications Alliance offered advice on the future of USF and intercarrier compensation reform, during a meeting with an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (http://xrl.us/bndox2). “The major portion of the meeting involved a general discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of: (a) the Commission proceeding rapidly to adopt orders with respect to the pending matters in the further rulemaking that affect rural telephone companies; or (b) waiting to monitor the impacts of its implemented changes before proceeding further,” the group said. “A hybrid approach of resolving certain critical issues at an early date (e.g., support for naked digital subscriber line services), while monitoring impacts before proceeding on others was also discussed."
The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association filed suit in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, asking for a stay of the FCC’s “flawed” regression analysis-based caps on USF support (http://xrl.us/bndbn6). NTCA is seeking an immediate stay of implementation of the new caps, which are set to be phased in starting Sunday. “The methodology for limiting rural carriers’ cost reimbursements through the USF’s high-cost program is, among other things, riddled with data errors and fails to provide predictable support,” a spokeswoman said. Specifically, NTCA took issue with a capping methodology it said would violate the commission’s statutory mandate to deploy predictable and sufficient mechanisms to advance universal service; inaccuracies in the data set used to designate geographic boundary areas and to compute the formulas’ coefficients’ and retroactive application to limit reimbursements for expenses incurred in past years. “NTCA recognizes the need for modernization of the universal service and intercarrier compensation regimes, which is why we made significant efforts last year to reach a consensus with other industry sectors on suggested updates to those programs,” said Shirley Bloomfield, NTCA’s CEO. “But these specific caps don’t achieve the purpose of modernization. To the contrary, the unpredictable, ever-changing and retroactive nature of these caps are already frustrating routine business planning, setting back investment in rural broadband, and will lead to declining service quality and higher prices for rural Americans.” NTCA has already filed for commission-level review of the regression caps, in a joint May filing with OPASTCO, the National Exchange Carrier Association and the Western Telecommunications Alliance (CD May 29 p7).
Allband asked the commission to stay implementation of the $3,000 per line annual funding cap adopted in the USF/intercarrier compensation order (http://xrl.us/bnc7pq). In a petition filed Wednesday, Allband asked for the permanent stay “so as to align its USF-committed revenues needed to pay” its Rural Utilities Service loans, and “to prevent a default of such loans, and to also prevent an impending close-down of Allband’s telephone and broadband network” that operates as an ILEC in areas of Michigan that previously “never had communications services by any carrier.” The stay would be in addition to the relief Allband sought in its February petition for waiver of the $250 per month high-cost universal service support cap, and a waiver of the framework to limit reimbursable capital and operating costs (CD Feb 15 p17).
The U.S. Forest Service bought 6,000 GPS devices from Globalstar’s Spot. The devices are “rugged, pocket-sized satellite-based personal trackers that work in places where cell phones and two way radios fail,” Spot said. USFS will use the units for employee safety, it said. Spot messenger devices initiated more than 1,800 rescues since they were introduced in 2007, Spot said.
The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission denied state USF money to Sacred Wind Communications in a 5-0 vote Tuesday. Sacred Wind had applied as a means to fund “the extension of high-speed telecom and Internet capabilities to underserved areas,” specifically in the rural Navajo Nation land, but the Commission said it was concerned these USF funds “might be used for things like investor profits instead of consumer benefits.” Sacred Wind “lacked the proof necessary to show that underserved consumers will be connected,” said Commissioner Theresa Becenti-Aguilar in prepared remarks. The commission held an extended hearing on the case in February. Sacred Wind serves “approximately 2,200 residential customers spread over 3,600 square miles of Navajo Reservation and near-reservation lands in remote, rural areas of New Mexico,” the company said earlier this year(http://xrl.us/bnc4pg).
The standard for relief for waivers from new USF rules should be tied to whether a company can repay its Rural Utilities Service loans and complete construction of wireline broadband systems, not whether voice service will be lost, the Rural Iowa Independent Telephone Association told FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and aides to Commissioners Robert McDowell and Jessica Rosenworcel in a series of meetings last week (http://xrl.us/bncvd3). The FCC’s reforms have “heightened the climate of uncertainty and have placed a chilling effect on new investments,” RIITA said. The shift of cost recovery to rural customers will burden consumers and result in further loss of access lines, they said.
NASUCA passed resolutions Monday addressing the need for telecom regulation at a time when many states throughout the last year have embraced the industry-backed trend of deregulation. At its mid-year meeting in Charleston, S.C. the organization adopted firm stances on such controversial topics as VoIP regulatory oversight.
Several rural telecom providers wrote the FCC Wireline Bureau to seek “clarification and further details” on the quantile regression analysis and related caps on USF support, said letters posted Friday. Twin Valley Communications in Kansas, Filer Mutual and ATC in Idaho and Nelson Telephone Cooperative in Wisconsin asked how their study area boundaries were established to develop the caps applicable to them, and what can be done to avoid falling under the caps in the future. Filer and ATC haven’t been affected by the USF caps, but Twin Valley and Nelson said they were both affected, and asked which specific costs are deemed “excessive” under the caps. Without that information, the companies fail to see “how the caps will encourage ‘efficient’ or ‘prudent’ behavior or provide a predictable support mechanism because we will not know what is expected by the new rules or how they will affect future support distributions,” they wrote. ATC sent a separate letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to ask him to suspend implementation of the USF/intercarrier compensation order, including the July 1 date for implementation of the regression methodology, “until the FCC can provide greater certainty that the rules will not jeopardize the services provided by rural rate-of-return carriers and the consumers that rely on them for broadband and other telecommunications services” (http://xrl.us/bncj99).
A group opposing the sale of KUSF(FM) San Francisco said in a news release it will file an appeal urging the FCC to reverse its approval of the sale. The University of San Francisco is selling the station to Classical Public Radio Network. The commission approved the sale as part of a consent decree that ordered USF and CPRN to pay $50,000 for violating rules in a public service operating agreement (CD June 8 p16). The decision “has serious local and national repercussions,” Save KUSF said. Although the FCC recognized that there were problems in the way USF and CPRN handled the license, it “just let the sale go ahead with a fine,” the group said.
House appropriators voted to cut FCC FY13 funding 5 percent to $323 million, during an Appropriations Committee markup Wednesday. The bill, which now awaits consideration on the House floor, gives the FCC $24 million less funding than the agency’s FY13 request of $347 million. The committee removed a provision that would have prevented the FCC from implementing its requirement for broadcasters to post political file information online.