Terry, Boucher Want FCC to Codify USF Agreement
The House sponsors of last year’s Universal Service Fund overhaul bill support the FCC acting on the industry USF agreement brokered by USTelecom. Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., no longer plans to move USF legislation, aide Brad Schweer told us Wednesday. He said that Terry “will now be encouraging the FCC to produce details that reflect suggestions” proposed by the industry group. Terry’s former co-sponsor Rick Boucher agreed that the commission should move forward on its own.
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Terry “is encouraged by the agreed-upon framework, but of course the details are very important on this,” Schweer said. “We'll be working with FCC and all stakeholders to make sure that any order reflects the agreed-upon consensus and especially that it doesn’t pull [the] rug out from under” rural local exchange carriers, he said. Terry said last month that he'd use the agreement as the basis for legislation (CD July 15 p3). Schweer said Wednesday that Terry misspoke.
The USTelecom-brokered agreement “is a big step,” ex-Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., told us. “It took a lot of discussion and negotiation to reach this point, but I think it is a milestone because now the commission is in a position to go forward with the confidence that it can structure a universal service and intercarrier comp reform with broad support.” Boucher had called for Congress to intervene in the overhaul (CD July 5 p6) but he said now the ILEC proposals parallel his own aborted legislation from last year. “Their filing did borrow considerably from our legislation,” he said: “The commission can now go forward on its own and I think it should."
Congress is still best-suited to reform contribution and may need to legislate an “entire package,” Boucher said. “There’s a role for both places.” Boucher now works as a lawyer at Sidley Austin, where he advises telcos.
The FCC is expected to put out the ILEC reform proposals for public comment sometime in the next few days. Meanwhile, some consumer advocates were already ramping up their lobbying. Last week, the Consumer Federation of America’s Mark Cooper and Parul Desai met with aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Wireline Bureau Staff, said an ex parte notice in docket 10-90 (http://xrl.us/bk4eg7). “The Consumer Reps emphasized that any reform efforts that provide for the shifting of revenue must ensure that the burden on consumers is not unbearable,” it said. “The Consumer Reps expressed concern over any reform efforts that would increase subscriber line charges.”
Free Press said the telco agreement “does not adequately reform the USF,” according to an ex parte notice released Wednesday. “The claim by the companies and trade associations that these parallel proposals represent ‘reform’ of the USF system ... is highly misleading.” The industry plan “merely shifts support from competitive carriers to the large price-cap incumbent carriers without addressing actual need for subsidies,” the group said: It also “unfairly raises basic telephone rates.”