Genachowski Seeking Joint Blog Post by Commissioners as New USF Public Notice Released

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s effort to issue another joint public statement by the FCC commissioners on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system reform appeared to be in flux late Thursday, agency officials said. Genachowski had hoped to get his colleagues to sign another Web post, as they did in March. Then, the full commission had promised “a busy spring and summer” of reform work and a promise to move to order’s “within a few months” of the comment cycle’s end in May (CD March 16 p10). Commissioners apparently couldn’t agree on language in the proposed new post, the officials said. Efforts to reach Genachowski’s spokesman for comment were unsuccessful at deadline.

Late Wednesday, the FCC issued a new public notice seeking comment on the USTelecom-brokered agreement on USF and intercarrier comp reforms. The notice also seeks comment on the “complementary” filing by rural carriers as well as proposals by the Joint Board for USF. It sets a short comment cycle, with initial comments due Aug. 24 and replies due Aug. 31.

The notice asks whether to create a separate mobility fund. The incumbent wireline carriers have agreed to set aside some $300 million for a loosely defined mobility fund (CD Aug 1 p1). Smaller wireless carriers are already taking aim at that proposal. Rural Cellular Association President Steve Berry said in an FCC filing the group is deeply concerned about the proposal (http://xrl.us/bk43oy). RCA said the plan is little more than a “self-serving ILEC proposal that would misallocate USF support, undermine competition, and deprive rural consumers of access to high-quality wireless services.”

The plan proposes a maximum of $300 million for support of wireless and satellite in extreme high-cost areas, “about 10 percent of the amount that wireless carriers contribute to USF,” Berry said. RCA supports a proposal in the plan establishing a uniform terminating access rate of $0.0007 per minute. “But the relatively modest savings that lower intercarrier compensation rates would generate for rural wireless carriers would be dwarfed by the dramatic reduction in high-cost support for such carriers under the” plan, Berry said.

Satellite broadband providers also came out hard against the telecom proposal Thursday, as expected (CD Aug 2 p4). The group of providers includes Spacenet, WildBlue and its parent company ViaSat, and Hughes and its parent Dish Network. They said the proposal is meant to benefit the “authors of the proposal, not American consumers.” The proposal asks the commission to throw away a competition-based approach “in favor of one that would give unjustified preferences to already-entrenched incumbents -- even where competitive satellite, wireless, cable, or other broadband providers could offer higher-quality service in a more cost-efficient manner, and even where those competitive providers already have invested billions of dollars in next-generation broadband infrastructure,” said the companies. ViaSat last week filed its own USF auction proposal that would let satellite broadband providers compete with other broadband providers for the government funds (CD Aug 1 p10).

Cable, though more muted in its response, has raised concerns similar to those of wireless and satellite carriers. “We also raised concerns with portions of the proposals that favor incumbent local exchange carriers, such as providing incumbents a right-of-first refusal to receive support for broadband and retaining rate-of-return regulation for an indefinite period of time,” NCTA said in an ex parte notice released Wednesday. Comcast said it “wanted further analysis and clarification” on such matters in the incumbent-backed reforms “as the use of wire centers to aggregate census blocks, the transitional access replacement mechanism for price cap carriers and the incumbent LECs’ right of first refusal to receive high-cost support for broadband.” The cable operator said its “two principal concerns are capping the size of the high-cost fund ... and moving as quickly as possible to a stable, more economically efficient uniform default rate for all terminating voice traffic."

Architects of the incumbent-backed reform plans came to its defense Thursday. “Momentum has built in favor of Chairman Genachowski’s goal of enacting serious reforms, and the coalition supporting FCC action is stronger than ever,” said David Fish, a spokesman for the six companies who hammered out the telecom agreement.