Members of USTelecom have come up with “a potential framework...
Members of USTelecom have come up with “a potential framework for reforming universal service,” USTelecom said in an ex parte notice released Thursday. Executives from Windstream, Verizon, AT&T and USTelecom said they met with Chairman Julius Genachowski’s wireline adviser Zac…
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Katz as well as Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett, Gillett’s deputies Carol Mattey and Amy Bender and Michael Steffen of the general counsel’s office, the notice said. The officials said their proposal would provide “support for the construction and operation of broadband networks in high-cost areas” through “explicit and matched obligations within the budget of current high-cost funding programs.” They “emphasized that this approach would provide support in high-cost areas, some of which may be unserved today and some of which may be currently served due, at least in part, to legacy support mechanisms,” USTelecom’s Jonathan Banks wrote in the notice. “Such a framework could increase the efficiency of support by calculating and distributing support on a more granular geographic basis than is typical of today’s universal support programs and by distributing broadband support to only those high-cost areas where no unsupported company is providing adequate broadband service."