Given the enormous challenge of bringing robust broadband to rural, high-cost areas, USTelecom supports combining the remaining funding from the first round of the Connect America Fund into funding for a second round in 2013, representatives told aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bn73dy). A “longer term solution” to the rural broadband challenge “depends on implementing Phase II” to distribute funding based on a cost model, USTelecom said. Funding should only be distributed in areas where there is no unsubsidized broadband service provider, it said. USTelecom also “stressed the importance of beginning a public dialogue on the benefits of reclassifying” ILECs as non-dominant.

AT&T and USTelecom said in an amicus brief filed at the Supreme Court that the high court should let stand a decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the commission’s 2009 wireless zoning shot-clock order. The court is slated to hear the case, Arlington, Texas v. FCC Jan. 16 (CD Dec 21 p1). “AT&T and USTelecom support the position of respondent Verizon: this Court should hold that Chevron deference does not apply to an agency’s interpretation of its own statutory jurisdiction, but should nevertheless affirm the judgment of the court of appeals on the alternative ground that the [FCC] had clear, unambiguous jurisdiction to issue the order under review based on the text of the Communications Act … and on this Court’s decision interpreting that Act in AT&T Corp. v. Iowa Utilities Board,” they told the court. “In telecommunications law specifically, this Court has frequently distinguished questions that relate to the scope of the Commission’s jurisdiction under the Communications Act from those that relate to how the Commission exercises that jurisdiction,” the brief said. “Further, the Commission itself has maintained the distinction between jurisdictional and non-jurisdictional issues in its own decisionmaking, showing that this distinction is useful analytically even apart from its significance for judicial review.”

USTelecom asked the FCC Wednesday to declare that ILECs are no longer presumptively dominant in providing switched access services. The switched access rules were designed for a monopoly era, and are no longer needed in a world where consumers have myriad ways to communicate, the association said. If granted, the petition would relieve ILECs of certain tariffing requirements, and USTelecom President Walter McCormick said it would move ILECs “somewhat closer to regulatory equivalence with their closest competitors.” CLECs and others worried that eliminating the rules could limit consumer choice.

Multichannel video programming distributors remain divided on whether the FCC should adopt a standard of rebuttable presumptions against withholding from other MVPDs channels that are affiliated with cable operators, comments on a rulemaking show. NCTA and programmers and operators that own channels opposed the presumptions that program access rules are violated by exclusive contracts for cable-affiliated regional sports networks (RSN) and national sports networks. Vertically-integrated operator/programmers also opposed the notion that once a channel affiliated with an operator is found to have one unfair exclusive contact, it can’t get more. The presumptions would be rebuttable by defendants.

Next-generation 911 will take significant, costly and long investments of time and money before the system can work, National Emergency Number Association (NENA) officials said at a Thursday USTelecom briefing. The future will spell change for regulations and the number and arrangement of 911 centers, the officials said. The U.S. “must address” NG-911 if the public switched telephone network will be sunsetted in the next few years, said NENA CEO Brian Fontes, citing the FCC’s recent push on text-to-911 and this week’s FCC Technological Advisory Council report (CD Dec 11 p2). Fontes asked USTelecom members to engage with NENA.

The expectation by price cap LECs that the Connect America Fund should be responsible for paying pre-CAF expenses is “baseless and arbitrary,” the American Cable Association wrote the FCC Friday (http://xrl.us/bn5b8t). It responded to a Nov. 20 USTelecom filing describing ACA’s approach to the Phase II cost model -- limiting recovery for investments made prior to adoption of the CAF -- as “legally indefensible.” Price cap LECs’ expectation for recovery for prior investments is unreasonable because those investments served locations never supported by the high-cost USF fund, ACA said. Many of those investments in the voice network were likely made years ago, and may be fully depreciated, it said. “There is no economic rationale for providing recovery anew for already depreciated assets.” On USF-supported investments in networks where price cap LECs also deployed broadband capabilities, “the price cap LECs were under no regulatory obligation to use pre-CAF high-cost support for this additional purpose,” and they should have “no expectation of receiving guaranteed government support,” ACA said. “The price cap LECs have failed to demonstrate they are deserving of any capital recovery of legacy copper plant investment under the Phase II regime.” Ross Lieberman, ACA vice president of government affairs, told us the price cap proposal was “not really grounded in reality."

Hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) lines can deliver the equivalent of ILEC time division multiplex-based dedicated connections, USTelecom told an aide to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai Monday (http://xrl.us/bn4opv). The association said it was responding to a question asked by Pai’s office about whether HFC can deliver special access or similar services. Cable companies like Charter Communications explicitly market Ethernet over coaxial facilities, USTelecom said. “Therefore, special access and similar services can be provided over HFC lines."

Whether to include data on “best efforts” Internet services in a special access market analysis remains the focus of negotiations between Republican FCC commissioners and their Democratic counterparts. The latest special access draft was distributed to commissioners Friday afternoon, but given the complexity of the subject matter and the number of changes that have been made, it wasn’t feasible to vote on it Friday, FCC officials said. “There’s been movement” from the Democrats’ and Republicans’ original positions, as both sides try to find common ground, one official said.

The November 2011 FCC USF order cost a rural Texas telco more than $500,000 in support, the company said. Hill Country Telephone Cooperative asked the Texas Public Utilities Commission for money from the state’s USF this fall to make up for the loss. “I've been in telecom for 34 years, and I find these days the most challenging of my career,” Hill Country General Manager Delbert Wilson told us. “This whole [FCC] transformation order has filled our industry with chaos and uncertainty."

A proposal by General Communication Inc. for flexibility in “annual recertification” of Lifeline subscribers saw support from USTelecom, AT&T, NTCA and Tracfone Wireless. GCI asked the FCC to clarify that “annual” could mean once per calendar year, rather than 12 months from the last certification (CD Oct 24 p12). Sprint Nextel said it “would not object to allowing some flexibility in timing of the recertification effort,” but suggested a “safe harbor standard” that would give 12 months of leeway from either the subscriber’s anniversary date or the date of the last certification.