The 8th U.S. Appeals Court should rehear en banc Nebraska’s appeal of a lower court decision barring the state from making traditional VoIP providers pay into its universal service fund, Nebraska officials said Thursday. A panel of the St. Louis-based court found May 1 that a U.S. District Court in Nebraska properly upheld an injunction Vonage obtained prohibiting Nebraska’s utility commission from assessing the VoIP company (WID May 4 p5). The en banc request challenges what the state called the panel’s “overbroad reading” of the FCC Vonage preemption order that the appeals court cited in rebuffing Nebraska. Contrary to what the 8th Circuit said, Vonage would not have succeeded with a claim to preemption that it deployed to obtain the injunction, the state argued. “Further, the Decision is based on a misapplication of the impossibility exception employed by the FCC to preempt such entry regulations,” Nebraska officials said in petitioning to have the ruling vacated and an en banc rehearing set. “Indeed, the United States and FCC submitted an amicus brief in this case in support of the NPSC, asserting that the Vonage Preemption Order ‘did not address, let alone preempt, the state-level universal service obligations of interconnected VoIP providers…’, and that the impossibility exception did not preclude the NPSC from placing this requirement on Vonage, as the NPSC’s NUSF Order ‘does not present a conflict with the FCC’s rules or policies.” The Nebraska utility commission’s order that Vonage pay into the state fund “does not conflict with any federal regulatory policy or impair the FCC’s authority to regulate the interstate aspect of interconnected VoIP service,” the state said. In seeking an en banc rehearing, the state faces “an upstream swim,” said Brad Ramsay, general counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “What’s in Nebraska’s favor is that there’s no question but that the court got it wrong. … The question is, will the other judges be willing to act or will they defer to their brother jurists?” The May 1 ruling stands to imperil state universal service funds and the federal USF, Ramsay said. “Everything is migrating to VoIP -- not necessarily nomadic, but VoIP nonetheless,” he said.
Vonage and other traditional VoIP providers don’t have to pay into the Nebraska Universal Service Fund, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday. The St. Louis-based court was upholding a district court decision that Nebraska officials had appealed. As the lower court had, the appeals court accepted Vonage’s claim to be an information service rather than a telecom service (CD Sept 15 p8).
Vonage and other traditional VoIP providers don’t have to pay into the Nebraska Universal Service Fund, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday. The St. Louis-based court was upholding a district court decision that Nebraska officials had appealed. As the lower court had, the appeals court accepted Vonage’s claim to be an information service rather than a telecom service. The appeals court decision bodes ill for state universal service funds beset by shrinking bases, Medley Global Partners wrote Friday in a note. “This decision is a major victory for the entire VoIP industry who have long fought the states and the FCC on this issue,” Medley said. Another casualty is the FCC, whose efforts at reforming the federal USF and access schemes Medley said will be tangled by the appeals court decision. That ruling “throws a monkey wrench into the FCC’s ongoing process on what kind of access charge regime should apply to VoIP traffic,” Medley said. The state had been joined in its appeal by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the FCC, filing as friends of the court. Vonage was joined in amicus briefs by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, TIA, Information Technology Industry Council, Information Technology Association of America, Fiber-To-The-Home Council, Verizon and the Voice on the Net Coalition.
The FCC, states and cellular carriers should come to terms on early termination fees and remove that “distraction” for good, Nebraska Public Utility Commissioner Ann Boyle said on a panel Tuesday at NARUC’s winter meeting in Washington. The group seeks to draft consumer-protection standards for cellphone users.
NEW ORLEANS -- State phone regulators see December as a key month, said panelists at the annual NARUC meeting here. Nebraska Public Service Commission member Sue Vanicek said her state’s suit over its power to assess Vonage and other intrastate VoIP providers a 6.95 percent fee to support the state universal service fund will affect USF efforts by other states, as will an FCC ruling expected next month on changing the federal system for ensuring universal phone service and agency controls on intercarrier compensation.
NEW ORLEANS -- State phone regulators see December as a key month, said panelists at the annual NARUC meeting here. Nebraska Public Service Commission member Sue Vanicek said her state’s suit over its power to assess Vonage and other intrastate VoIP providers a 6.95 percent fee to support the state universal service fund will affect USF efforts by other states.
With President-elect Barack Obama set to lead in 2009, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein hopes broadband deployment and other “long-neglected” issues “finally get the attention they deserve,” he said Thursday in a keynote at a University of Nebraska College of Law conference. Afterward, a panel of telecom officials said the FCC and Congress should focus on broadband deployment next year.
With President-elect Barack Obama set to lead in 2009, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein hopes broadband deployment and other “long-neglected” issues “finally get the attention they deserve,” he said Thursday in a keynote at a University of Nebraska College of Law conference. Afterward, a panel of telecom officials said the FCC and Congress should focus on broadband deployment next year.
The universal service high-cost fund will “spiral completely out of control” if the FCC grants a Hawaiian Telecom waiver petition, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association said in reply comments. The carrier disagreed, saying “special circumstances” justify its exemption from usual measurement methods used to set a non- rural local incumbent carrier’s USF support. Even if USF measurement methods need an overhaul, opponents said, it should come in three proposed rulemakings now before the FCC.
A federal court declared it “unlawful” for Nebraska to force Vonage to pay into a state universal service fund. The U.S. District Court for Nebraska slammed the Nebraska PSC with a preliminary injunction, saying the PSC’s “authority to regulate the nomadic interconnected VoIP service provided by [Vonage] is preempted by the FCC, and Vonage need not comply with the [Nebraska USF order].” The order applies only to Nebraska, but will “send a signal” to other states, said Stifel Nicolaus analyst David Kaut.