NCTA and the American Cable Association jointly raised concerns about a USTelecom-brokered compromise proposal on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation reform, in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski sent Tuesday. Cable operators, as key competitors to telecom carriers for voice and data, are expected to be key players as the commission looks at changing its rules for USF and intercarrier comp. Comments are due Wednesday at the FCC on the so called “consensus” agreement.

No new laws or regulations are needed to prevent voicemail hacking in the U.S., said telecom and cable industry associations in letters released Tuesday. Reacting last month to the News Corp. phone hacking scandal in the U.K., House Commerce Subcommittee on Manufacturing Chair Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., sent letters to the heads of USTelecom, CEA, CTIA, NCTA and the Information Technology Industry Council (CD July 19 p6) asking if it’s necessary to adopt new practices, laws or regulations to prevent phone hacks and other privacy breaches. Bono Mack “is reviewing all of the information provided in the letters and is satisfied, at this point in time, that the phone hacking scandal appears to be limited to Great Britain,” her spokesman said Tuesday.

The FCC should take “swift and decisive” action to “promote universal broadband connectivity and advanced Internet protocol (IP) networks” as it moves forward on Universal Service Fund and Intercarrier compensation reform, Google, Skype, Vonage, the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee and Sprint Nextel said in a filing to the commission (http://xrl.us/bmasxm). The filing proposes its own principles for reform, starting with an argument that the legacy USF should eventually be eliminated, in favor of a new fund that pays for broadband.

Addressing “traffic pumping” and “phantom traffic” is an “essential part of inter-carrier compensation reform,” representatives of USTelecom and some of its member companies said in a meeting Wednesday with FCC Wireline Bureau staff (http://xrl.us/bmaj6g).

Lawyers and an economist for Comcast seek access to all documents a group of six large phone companies filed with the FCC on changing the Universal Service Fund to pay for broadband. The documents include those from AT&T, Frontier, CenturyLink, FairPoint, Verizon and/or Windstream, the Lawler Metzger law firm said in a Wednesday filing in docket 10-90 (http://xrl.us/bmaimb). Michael Pelcovits of Microeconomic Consulting also signed a confidentiality acknowledgment. Cable operators haven’t yet backed the plan from the six major phone carriers that was brokered by USTelecom (CD Aug 1 p1).

USTelecom and Sprint Nextel separately asked the FCC Wireline Bureau to clarify that carriers shouldn’t have to reimburse the Universal Service Administrative Co. when Rural Health Care (RHC) applicants don’t comply with USAC audit procedures. AT&T asked the commission to reverse a decision by USAC that the service provider must foot the bill when one of its customers violates a USAC rule. The amount of money in question in the case appealed by AT&T is small: $1,860. The industry commenters said the issue presented is much larger.

Recovery funding for price cap carriers necessary as a result of the plan filed by a USTelecom-organized group of carriers (CD Aug 1 p1) “will be relatively small and will fit easily within the overall budget set out in the Consensus Framework.” That’s what leading members of the group told Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett and other FCC officials. The group “committed to file information showing year-by-year modeling of the transition from current USF to a reformed system focused on supporting broadband,” it said in a filing (http://xrl.us/bk97hv). “That modeling will include both the ... plan and Joint Rural Association filing as modified by the Consensus Framework.” The group “also discussed the likelihood that there are a significant number of locations without broadband service that are in areas that are not modeled as high-cost, and what solution the” plan would provide for such locations,” it said. The “plan is focused on supporting the delivery of broadband in high-cost areas and does not directly address unserved locations in areas that are not high-cost,” the filing said. The “plan would account for new service locations in areas that receive broadband support,” it said “Under the plan, new service locations within supported areas would be included in the support recipient’s broadband network obligations or through operation of the alternate technology provisions of the plan."

Verizon and Google disagreed sharply on whether the FCC should give tw telecom the declaratory ruling it asked for. Tw seeks a ruling that VoIP is a telecom service under Title II, giving the company the right “to establish direct IP-to-IP interconnections.” Google, as well as NCTA and a number of cable operators, supported the company’s arguments. Verizon and USTelecom said any such ruling would be premature.

NTCA hasn’t backed away from its joint universal service reform plan that it forged with other rural associations earlier this year, but its decision to file a complementary letter to the USTelecom-brokered agreement “was premised upon a delicate balance of interests and difficult trade-offs,” the group said in a meeting with Margaret McCarthy, aide to Commissioner Michael Copps. That said, “any material changes to the modified RLEC Plan, any attempts to blend or import any concepts from the separate and distinct ‘America’s Broadband Connectivity’ proposal into the RLEC Plan, or the conversion of any budget targets for small rural carriers into caps imposed by rule would harm small rural providers who had already taken significant steps to enable the consensus framework and likely lead to the collapse of this carefully balanced compromise,” NTCA told McCarthy, according to an ex parte notice filed on docket 10-90.

Aug. 15 NATOA webinar on building fiber to the home, 2 p.m. -- http://xrl.us/bkz58c