NARUC Will Debate Four Resolutions at Its Midyear Meeting

The FCC “has not classified VoIP as anything,” Betty Kane, chairman of the D.C. Public Service Commission and sponsor of the proposed Resolution TC-2, told us. Her resolution draft proposes NARUC “urge Congress to reject any legislative proposal that would prohibit or limit the authority of states and local governments to assess a tax or surcharge fee to interconnected VoIP service providers and their customers in order to provide financial support for state USFs and E911 services.” The Federal Digital Goods and Services Tax Fairness Act (HR-1860) inspired the resolution, Kane said, and caused what she called an “uh oh” moment when it passed the House Judiciary Committee and was sent on for the legislative body’s full consideration June 28. The legislation would have “the effect of prohibiting states” from collecting these taxes and fees, Kane explained. The resolution doesn’t address the definition of VoIP, and focuses instead on the taxation and fees for state universal service funds and E-911, she said. “I haven’t heard any opposition, just questions,” Kane said about initial reactions to the resolution.

Another proposed resolution calls on the FCC to keep pursuing rural call termination issues, as it has been for the last year. “We're asking the FCC to keep working on it and identify who the guilty parties are,” said Acting Telecom Manager Mike Balch of the Iowa Utilities Board. Iowa Commissioner Swati Dandekar proposed Resolution TC-1, which thanks the FCC for pursuing rural call termination issues and says it must continue doing so. The FCC “must quickly assess forfeitures to the maximum extent allowed by Section 503(b)(2)(B),” the draft states, to those providers who have ignored the FCC’s Feb. 6 declaratory ruling. The ruling (http://xrl.us/bng7x8) condemned carriers that provide degraded service without seeking to improve it and established penalties of up to $150,000 per violation. That $150,000 may be applied each day the violation goes unfixed up to a maximum penalty of $1.5 million per single violation, the ruling says. The FCC declined to comment.

"There’s a lot of support” for the resolution, Balch told us. His commission has tried to discuss the resolution with larger carriers and as many people as possible upfront, he said. The challenge will be for the FCC to identify the carriers who haven’t abided by the commission’s ruling, Balch said. He said the FCC hasn’t issued fines for these violations so far. The Iowa commission staff had considered what Balch calls “a very serious public safety problem” for several months, and the June 10-13 Mid-America Regulatory Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, reinforced the nature of the problem in the presentations of the National Exchange Carrier Association, Balch explained. NECA had conducted tests in April (CD May 18 p5) that showed “call termination issues in rural areas were still at unacceptable levels” despite showing improvement since NECA tests in September 2011, the resolution draft said. The resolution said the problem will only improve when “a provider that has failed materially and repeatedly to route calls to destinations as sought by originating callers faces serious consequences for such failures."

NARUC’s final two proposed resolutions again appeal to the FCC and are both sponsored by Commissioner Larry Landis of Indiana. One questions how the FCC has been assessing carriers’ needs since the November 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation order. The resolution said the order “adopted a framework for ‘ensuring’ that companies do not receive more support than necessary for prudent capital and operating costs” with a method that has encountered a share of scrutiny, which the text of the resolution lists in detail. The draft of TC-3 would relay NARUC’s support for “calls for the suspension in the QRA [quantile regression analysis] implementation until questions about its impact and appropriateness are resolved and the economy improves sufficiently,” the proposed resolution said. Another proposed resolution “requests the FCC to direct CMRS providers to cease blocking deployment of dual wireless/FM radio capability, and to adhere to the spirit of the Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act of 2006.” NARUC staff should act to “convey the spirit and content” of the resolution to FCC staff, members of Congress and any other “appropriate federal officials,” the draft said.

The NARUC conference will cover telecom issues Saturday through Wednesday with a variety of panels. Topics include the USF Mobility Fund auctions, how sharing the 700 MHz spectrum of FirstNet will work, the problems and solutions of implementing Lifeline reform, how states are reacting to the USF and FCC reforms of the past year and wireless communications device theft. NARUC’s annual meeting is in Baltimore Nov. 11-14, with registration beginning Sept. 3.