More telecom industry groups urged the FCC to extend comment and reply deadlines on an AT&T petition seeking interim declaratory ruling and limited waivers related to access charges for VoIP traffic. The FCC should meld the AT&T request with a similar one by Embarq, and extend the deadline for comments to Aug. 26 and replies to Sept. 5, they said in a motion for consolidation filed Friday. The petitioners are the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, National Exchange Carrier Association, Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and the Western Telecommunications Alliance. If the FCC doesn’t formally combine the proceedings, it should extend the comments deadline on the AT&T petition to Aug. 26, the day comments are due on Embarq’s request, and permit parties to file comments on both dockets simultaneously, the alliance said. AT&T and Embarq want a unified switched access rate, it said. Consolidation would let the FCC and interested parties “address efficiently and rationally the common issues of the petitions.” CompTel, which last week urged the FCC to extend deadlines on the AT&T petition to Aug. 28 for comments and Sept. 11 for replies (CD Aug 7 p12), told us Friday that it backs the new proposal. “We would support combining the two petitions and the proposed comment deadlines,” a spokeswoman said. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners also wants more time, it said, filing a motion late Friday. NARUC urged the FCC to extend the deadlines two weeks. “The AT&T proposal is troubling at several levels,” it said. “Many of NARUC’s members lack the staff resources to complete an analysis of the proposal, and get it through required State Commission approval procedures, in the time provided.”
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
The FCC will reform intercarrier compensation and the Universal Service Fund together, perhaps this year, Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president, told reporters Thursday. “If [reform is] going to happen, it’s going to happen in a package,” Tauke said. Two months ago, he doubted intercarrier reform could happen this year, he said. Taking compensation together with USF distribution and contribution is “a lot to swallow,” but court pressure and growing industry consensus makes him optimistic, Tauke said. Now is the “last best chance” for the telecom and technology sector to ally and reform an “unsustainable” system, he said.
Heightened cable competition, wireless substitution and the economic slowdown hurt Qwest Q2, company officials said in a Wednesday earnings call. The company’s mass-market revenue fell 3 percent year-over-year to $1.5 billion. Wholesale revenue slid 8 percent to $823 million.
The FCC eased regulation of Qwest enterprise broadband services late Tuesday, voting 3-2 to grant the company forbearance on part of a petition seeking relief from Title II and Computer Inquiry rules on its enterprise broadband services. Qwest asked for the same regulatory relief the FCC gave Verizon in a controversial 2006 “deemed granted” ruling. The Qwest order, adopted July 22 and released late Tuesday, was more than a month ahead of the agency’s Sept. 12 statutory deadline for ruling. The FCC denied Qwest forbearance from statutory and regulatory mandates not specific to incumbents, and requirements other than Computer Inquiry requirements that apply to Qwest as an ILEC or Bell operating company.
The FCC shouldn’t apply an interim cap on the Universal Service Fund high-cost program until it weighs a petition for reconsideration (CD Aug 5 p3) by the Rural Cellular Association and a group of small wireless competitive eligible telecommunications carriers, said the RCA. The RCA sought a stay late Monday, after filing the reconsideration petition Friday, when the interim cap took effect. The wireless CETC group could go to court. Under court rules, the group may file for court relief if the FCC denies the stay, doesn’t act on the motion for stay or denies the reconsideration petition. “If and when this matter reaches a circuit court of appeals,” the RCA said, “the court undoubtedly will have before it data from USAC showing what the Commission’s CETC-only cap actually saved the USF.” If the data show savings below 1 percent “as it does now,” the interim cap “will be greeted by judicial skepticism at best.”
A majority of FCC commissioner offices want to act by October on submarine cable operators’ proposal related to regulatory fees the agency charges submarine cable systems, said an FCC official. Level 3 and several other private submarine cable operators want the FCC to create a new regulatory fee category for submarine cable systems, carved from the current international bearer circuit slot. Friday, the FCC approved 5-0 an order giving itself 60 days to address the issue (CD Aug. 4 p5). That’s a hard deadline, though the FCC has authority to extend it, agency and industry sources said. The commission didn’t act on the issue at the Aug. 1 meeting because it needed more time to consider a revised proposal filed by submarine cable operators last month, the FCC official said. Submarine cable operators are scheduling meetings with the commission for next week, but nothing is set, said an industry official close to the proceeding. Operators are open to talking to the proposal’s opponents, which include Verizon and AT&T, the source said.
The Rural Cellular Association formally challenged an FCC interim cap on the Universal Service Fund high-cost program, filing a reconsideration petition over the weekend. The group was expected to file a motion for stay on Monday, but hadn’t at our deadline. The reconsideration petition also was signed by small wireless competitive eligible telecommunications carriers. “The high-cost fund ‘emergency’ alleged by the commission is a farce,” said RCA Executive Director Eric Peterson. “The decision to implement the cap is based on inaccurate facts, false assumptions, flawed legal reasoning and ignores Congressional direction and the principle of competitive neutrality.”
The FCC will consider easing an in-market exclusion for roaming agreements, at its Aug. 22 meeting, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters Monday. The FCC will vote on an order on reconsideration addressing issues raised by Sprint, Leap Wireless, MetroPCS, SpectrumCo and T-Mobile in petitions to reconsider last summer’s roaming order (CD Aug 8/07 p1). Martin is also seeking votes on a digital TV fine and an HD-carriage exemption for small cable systems.
Broadband providers protested FCC proposals to collect more broadband data, in comments Friday. Wireline, wireless and cable operators condemned FCC proposals to collect data on voice connections, broadband pricing and actual delivered broadband speed. They also pooh-poohed FCC customer surveys. The FCC proposals were attached to an order adopted last March revising FCC Form 497 to collect broadband data at the Census Tract level (CD June 16 p6). Broadband mapping, another proposal in the order, was debated last month (CD July 21 p1).
Reform is needed of a $3.3 billion federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program, witnesses told a Thursday House Science Committee hearing. Witnesses endorsed August 2007 recommendations by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. “Networking and information technology is an essential component of U.S. scientific, industrial, and military competitiveness,” said Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn. NITRD has been “largely a success,” but the PCAST analysis must “be seriously considered and then addressed, as appropriate, through legislative adjustments to the NITRD authorizing statute.” Thursday’s hearing was a “first step” in a longer process the committee plans to conclude next year, he said.