The FCC should reject USTelecom’s request that ILECs be relieved...

While the new frozen support rule imposes a spending obligation, it’s “fully compensated (and more)” by the amount of support being provided to the carriers, NCTA said. “There is no requirement that the shareholders of these companies spend any money that will not be recovered through high-cost support.” USTelecom asserts that price cap carriers will experience an “Unrecovered Reduction in Legacy Access Replacement,” but that is a “newly invented phrase” that means “nothing more than the fact that these companies will be collecting less high-cost universal service support from inefficient legacy mechanisms than they did” before the reforms in the USF/intercarrier compensation order, NCTA said. “The essence of the USTelecom argument is that its member companies are concerned about being required to spend their high-cost subsidies in ways that advance the Commission’s broadband agenda,” NCTA said. “While it is certainly understandable that they would prefer the legacy regime, in which they received millions of dollars in funding each year without any obligation to spend it in a particular way, the Commission should take this opportunity to make clear that those days are over."