Mobility Fund Too Small, T-Mobile, Others Say
The FCC’s proposed mobility fund is too small to help build out 3G broadband for the nation’s under-served areas, T-Mobile, the Rural Telecommunications Group and South Dakota-based Flow Mobile said in comments filed in docket 10-208 and released Friday. Verizon and Windstream disagreed, saying the fund was appropriate. Verizon, in fact, went further and said that not only is the $100-$300 million proposed mobility fund adequate, but the FCC should phase out other support for competitive eligible telecommunications providers.
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The commission has been seeking comments on its proposed mobility fund, which will include “reverse auctions” in underserved markets. Comments were due Friday and an order isn’t expected until at least mid-February (CD Dec 7 p2).
Sprint-Nextel was generally positive about the proposed fund, but suggested that the FCC branch out by creating three different kinds of pilot programs: one that allowed “winner take all” auctions, one that allowed a “winner take more” approach, and a third that supported multiple carriers.
U.S. Cellular condemned the proposal, saying the FCC ought to focus on the Connect America Fund rulemaking that would provide universal service fund support for broadband. The mobility fund will face a host of “legal impediments,” its “proposed financing is neither sufficient nor legally sound,” it will “provide only token assistance” and the reverse auctions will be “calamitous,” U.S. Cellular said.
The proposed fund “will increase the gap between the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ communities,” the National Tribal Telecommunications Association said in its comments. The reverse auction plan only favors “providers with ‘deep pockets'”; the tribal association said. “The FCC must support native communities’ efforts to provision their own regulatory needs.”
Also raising legal concerns was the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. Unlike U.S. Cellular, the association supported the proposal, but said the FCC has not specifically affirmed that USF support for mobility services “meets the conditions that are clearly spelled out by Section 254(c)(1) of the Telecommunications Act. “Thus the commission needs to confirm the finding of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service,” the association said in its filings.
The Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance urged the commission to adopt tough standards on carrier investment, coverage, quality of service and what ITTA called “accountability mechanisms.” “The commission has enabled great progress in wireline deployment across the nation; the goals-driven, cost-cognizant overviews of those programs should inform the process the commission undertakes for mobile broadband,” ITTA said.
With the mobility fund comment period closed, the FCC ought to move “quickly” to reform inter-carrier compensation and USF, implement USF support for broadband and focus on “streamlining of the low-income programs to properly assign eligibility and verifications responsibilities and to include broadband,” USTelecom said in its comments.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies said it was cheered by the FCC’s proposal but said the commission should focus not on geography in doling out mobility funding, but on areas hardest hit by unemployment.