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.

Multiple parties in Oregon want the FCC to change its Lifeline rules. The FCC should kill the requirement that state Lifeline administrators send subscribers’ Lifeline certification forms to eligible telecom carriers before the carriers can claim reimbursement, said the Oregon Public Utility Commission staff and the Oregon Telecom Association in an ex parte filing posted Friday (http://xrl.us/bn2itg). Without modification, the FCC’s rules will compel the Oregon PUC to “photocopy and mail an average of 2,500 to 4,000 (and growing) certification forms each month to the consumer’s respective ETC,” they said. They support the position of USTelecom, which raised concerns in April and acquired a waiver through December to this end. The filing suggests that the FCC call for the state administrators to provide the eligible carriers with notice that subscribers qualify for Lifeline and that certification forms have been executed, the filing said. The Oregon stakeholders argue the current FCC requirement “does nothing to enhance the validity of the subscriber’s eligibility” and instead adds “burden and costs” to state Lifeline administrators and carriers. Oregon would execute its program more efficiently if these contested FCC rules are waived, they said.

The FCC should deny attempts to rescind the Tribal Government Engagement Obligation Provisions developed during the agency’s work on USF reform, the National Broadband Plan and the Connect America Fund, the National Congress of American Indians of the U.S. (NCAI) said Tuesday in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnznyn). The filing occurred after the NCAI adopted a resolution Oct. 26 encouraging the FCC to uphold the Tribal Engagement Provisions, which the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs developed in connection with the Wireline and Wireless bureaus (http://xrl.us/bnznyt). The FCC developed the provisions “with the intent of improving the deployment of telecommunications services on tribal lands,” NCAI President Jefferson Keel said in the filing. The NCAI grew concerned after USTelecom filed a petition that requested reconsideration and clarification of the provisions. NCAI, Native Public Media, the Gila River Indian Community and Gila River Telecommunications filed replies in opposition to the USTelecom petition (CD Sept 28 p6). “Any rescission of the Tribal Engagement Provisions would be an unfortunate set-back in the progress needed to bring digital communications to this country’s least connected peoples and lands,” Keel said Tuesday in the NCAI filing.