FCC Should ‘Peel Away’ USF Problems, Frontier CEO Says
The FCC should “peel away” some of the least contentious problems in a Universal Service Fund overhaul “instead of trying to boil the ocean,” Frontier Chairman Maggie Wilderotter told us Monday. Wilderotter was in town for an unrelated conference but met Monday morning with Chairman Julius Genachowski’s chief of staff, Eddie Lazarus. She said the commission could more easily tackle problems like phantom traffic. “That’s a big area they could clear up,” she said. “They have the authority to do that tomorrow” by subjecting all calls, even Internet voice, to USF charges and by changing the formula so it reflects the actual costs of service.
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While Frontier believes that the FCC can act right now on some small pieces of USF and intercarrier compensation, congressional action is needed for more-sweeping changes, said Wilderotter. “The FCC doesn’t have mandated authority today to provide a subsidy for broadband because it’s not regulated,” she said. What happens in the November election “will be telling” about the chances for passing a USF bill. If House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., wins re-election, “he could be the broker to get a bill done … and we would help him with that.”
Frontier “didn’t have a problem” with the net neutrality deal proposed last week by Boucher and House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Wilderotter said. “It was something we could definitely live with.” Frontier liked that the proposal included a two-year sunset and that it directed the commission to decide some of the more technical issues, like the rules’ application to wireline versus wireless, she said. The bill fell through when “other constituents” in industry “killed it,” Wilderotter said. She said she doesn’t know who specifically backed out, “but I do know AT&T and Verizon were not thrilled” with the bill because of the wireless piece.
Frontier opposes the FCC chairman’s proposal to reclassify broadband transport under Title II of the Communications Act. “It would be better to keep” broadband “an information service and get Congress to provide the FCC with authority to endorse and defend the broadband principles that are in place today,” Wilderotter said. “We're all living by those principles, so I don’t think that’s an issue.”