Rural telcos have asked the White House to help save them from newly passed Universal Service Fund reforms. NARUC, meanwhile, decided to join the court challenge against October’s FCC USF reforms (CD Oct 28 p1), a state official told us.
Native Americans became the first parties to oppose petitions to reconsider last fall’s universal service reforms, the record on docket 10-90 showed. The National Congress of American Indians and Navajo telecom regulators filed separate, but similarly worded, briefs to oppose RLEC’s request for exemption of some of the new rules’ guidelines for deploying broadband in tribal areas (CD Oct 28 p1).
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski should overhaul the Universal Service Fund’s Lifeline program “only if such reform translates as eliminating the USF altogether,” said Heartland Institute scholar Bruce Edward Walker Tuesday. The draft Lifeline reform order, expected to have circulated late Tuesday, has been met with some ambivalence (CD Jan 10 p1). Late Tuesday, the commission said a Lifeline and Link Up reform order and rulemaking notice is tentatively scheduled for a vote at the Jan. 31 meeting. Walker meanwhile said universal service has reached “97 percent of the population, a fact reported in the Federal Communications Commission’s own research that seems to elude the chairman.” Customers are already paying too much in USF fees, Walker said. “Government fees account for 15 percent of customers’ regular service charges on average, which is more than double the sales tax levied in most states. Additionally, 59 cents of each USF dollar collected from users’ bills isn’t appropriated to build out and connections but to cover the administrative costs of perpetuating a completely unnecessary bureaucracy."
Civil rights and “digital divide” erasure advocates gave mixed reviews to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s Lifeline reform proposals Monday. As expected (CD Jan 9 p7), Genachowski promised what he called “cost controls” and “a budget” for Lifeline and Link-Up, with most of his efforts focused on rooting out some 200,000 duplicate claims and building a database to prevent future “waste.” The draft order will circulate Tuesday, Genachowski said.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski plans to circulate an order on the Lifeline program as early as Tuesday, telecom and commission officials told us. As Genachowski did with the high-cost portion of the Universal Service Fund last fall (CD Oct 28 p1), the coming order is expected to put Lifeline on what the chairman will call “a budget.” It will not formally cap the Lifeline portion of USF, telecom and FCC officials said. It’s expected to address eligibility requirements and how to remove people from the Lifeline rolls if they're not eligible, telecom officials said.
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell expects Universal Service Fund reform to dominate the FCC’s agenda in the early part of 2012, starting with a Lifeline cleanup order at the Jan. 31 meeting. McDowell hopes that will be followed by an order addressing USF contribution issues left unsettled by last October’s order (CD Oct 28 p1), he said during an interview last week. McDowell said he remains open minded on a 700 MHz interoperability order and stressed the importance of spectrum efficiency. McDowell also thinks more media ownership deregulation than the FCC proposed in the quadrennial review may be needed.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Thursday named senior advisor Zac Katz as his new chief of staff, to serve for what is expected to be the final year or so of his chairmanship. Katz, Genachowski’s aide on wireline issues, had been a key player in the commission’s approval last year of a Universal Service Fund/intercarrier compensation order. Katz was also a top Genachowski aide behind the FCC’s approval in December 2010 of its controversial net neutrality rules, having spent a year working on that issue when he first got to the agency.
The FCC understands that some companies may not be able to meet newly imposed deadlines for auditing their books under new Universal Service Fund rules, Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Carol Mattey said Thursday. “We are well aware of the challenges of companies that have not been able to submit to a financial audit,” Mattey said in a webinar hosted by USTelecom. “I do very much appreciate the time-sensitivity of it and I think we will be able to give some guidance on the timing of that. We recognize that certain things may not be able to be implemented by the deadline of this year.”
CenturyLink sees four key growth opportunities: broadband, fiber-to-the-home initiatives, managed...
CenturyLink sees four key growth opportunities: broadband, fiber-to-the-home initiatives, managed hosting/cloud services and CenturyLink Prism TV, said financial chief Stewart Ewing during Citi’s investor conference Wednesday. The company seeks to focus on enterprise and business markets this year, Ewing said, saying business customers offer a stable revenue stream. More than 60 percent of revenue in 2011 came from business and wholesale customers, he said. The company is expanding its sales team in the enterprise group, he said, and plans to expand its broadband and IPTV offerings in the consumer market. Meanwhile, as broadband usage becomes higher there will be usage-based pricing, he said. There would be minimal impact of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund/intercarrier compensation order on the company’s 2012 revenue, he said. The long-term impact would depend on CenturyLink’s participation in the USF for broadband program, he said. It will probably take a year for the company to determine whether it will participate and where to build, he said.
T-Mobile USA might be ready to re-emerge as a competitor now that the deal with AT&T is over: The carrier is seeking low income-only eligible telecommunications carrier status in five states. Even as the deal with AT&T was moving forward, T-Mobile was quietly seeking certification as an ETC in four states. Meanwhile, it’s protesting the FCC’s 2011 Universal Service Fund order’s treatment of carriers designated as ETCs. Its petition for reconsideration or clarification (http://xrl.us/bmnmv4) of the FCC’s USF revamp order was the first major filing by T-Mobile since AT&T’s proposed buy of the company was officially terminated Dec. 19.