Despite the long-stated target date of Tuesday to issue rules for applying for NTIA and RUS grants and loans under the $7.2 billion broadband stimulus program, the guidelines may not be announced until later this week, several industry sources said. The agencies working with Vice President Joe Biden, the Obama administration’s point-man for stimulus spending, may announce this week the official “notice of funds availability,” several sources told Communications Daily. Biden will discuss broadband investments at a media event Wednesday in Erie, Pa., with Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, Biden’s office announced Monday. The vice-president’s office did not return a call for comment on its plans for announcing grant terms. -- TW
Verizon and AT&T expressed general support for the revised eligible services list proposed by the Universal Service Administrative Co. to the FCC for funding year 2010. But the carriers asked the commission for tweaks to guarantee that the E-rate plan covers wireless data plans. Sprint Nextel also sought changes clarifying that mobile solutions which have fundamentally changed how people communicate should also be eligible.
The FCC should stop “excessive” special-access pricing by AT&T and Verizon, the NoChokePoints Alliance, a new coalition of competitors and customers of the big phone companies (CD June 18 p7), told reporters Monday. “Releasing the broadband economy from the choke hold these huge phone companies have on the special-access market will be a catalyst for innovation and investment in the broadband marketplace,” said spokeswoman Maura Corbett. The coalition’s statement prompted a flurry of counter-statements from incumbent local exchange carriers and others.
A bill to require road construction projects to include conduits for broadband was introduced by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mark Warner of Virginia. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that 90 percent of the cost of deploying broadband is for digging up and repairing the road, said a news release announcing the bill. It would require states to install broadband conduit in connection with any federally funded transportation project - - a new highway or repair to an existing road, lane or shoulder. “Dig once,” Klobuchar said, adding that it’s a waste of taxpayers’ patience and money to work on a road and then turn around “a year or two later to install underground communication cables.” The bill would provide waivers of the requirement if the Transportation Department and Federal Communications Commission determine conduit isn’t needed. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., has introduced a similar bill, HR- 2428, in the House (CD May 15 p12).
Homes unprepared for DTV in the “home stretch” to June 12 would be “hard to motivate” as well as to reach, Burson- Marsteller told the FCC in an April proposal that landed the mega-agency the $3.5 million contract to provide the commission with consumer outreach “support services” in the final phase of the DTV transition (CD May 12 p7). To reach these “at-risk audiences,” any 11th-hour campaign should “interrupt them where they live, motivate them to get prepared … and surround them with its message from multiple channels, from sources they know and trust,” said the proposal, released to Communications Daily’s publisher, Warren Communications News, under the Freedom of Information Act.
Harlin McEwen, the Public Safety Spectrum Trust’s chairman, said the departure of Cyren Call as adviser to his group has been a “double-edged” sword for the organization. Speaking Wednesday to the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council’s governing board, he also FCC work on rules for a 700 MHz D-block auction seems to be on hold. McEwen said he has no idea what approach the commission will ultimately adopt.
The FCC should set a goal for everyone in the U.S. to have broadband access by early 2014, major phone companies said late Monday as comments for the commission’s national plan continued arriving. There was wide agreement that overhauling the Universal Service Fund must be a high priority.
A federal appeals court rejected two FCC rules designed to protect deaf consumers from unwanted lobbying. Ruling late Thursday on appeals by Sorenson and Purple Communications, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver remanded the telecom relay service rules, calling one unconstitutional and the other arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act. The court dismissed a challenge by Purple to a third rule on abusive marketing practices, because the TRS provider hadn’t sought FCC reconsideration.
The FCC is unlikely to act soon on renewed requests by AT&T and Verizon this week and last (CD June 3 p11) to bar cable companies from withholding access to their sports channels, said commission and industry officials. Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Robert McDowell haven’t asked acting Chairman Michael Copps to approve drafting an order, they said. That work probably won’t start while Copps heads the FCC, since it isn’t a consensus issue and the commissioners don’t consider it urgent, they said. But telco executives said they're optimistic of eventual action.
A diverse group of “sellers and purchasers of special access services” recommended a set of guidelines for a proposed data request, should the FCC ask for data from carriers on special access charges. The group said the FCC should “establish financial performance and productivity for incumbent price-cap carrier special access by gathering historical data on revenues, costs, and inputs”; identify areas of the country where competition is lacking; evaluate what demand and pricing data from the largest buyers and of services “indicates about competition”; and “identify terms and conditions imposed on purchasers of incumbent price-cap carrier special access that thwart competition.” “AT&T, Verizon and a handful of other incumbent price-cap carriers have dominant positions in the provision of special access in their home markets,” the petition said. It cited complaints by wireless carriers Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile, two large purchasers of special access circuits that signed the petition. Both say “they have in most cases, for years, purchased the vast majority of their high-capacity circuits from incumbent LECs -- their competitors in the wireless market,” the petition said. “Careful scrutiny clearly reveals that the market for special access service is not competitive.” The net result of an uncompetitive market is predictable, the petition argued: “Rates for special access service are extremely high. Even the most favorable prices available under long-term contracts are much higher than the regulated, cost-based prices for equivalent unbundled network elements.” Other signers of the petition were the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Integra Telecom, the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Group, tw telecom, BT Americas, Cbeyond and One Communications. “Large incumbent global carriers like AT&T and Verizon still exert unfair control in the business broadband market,” said Don Shepheard, tw telecom vice president of federal regulatory affairs. “Those companies are preventing American businesses, schools and doctors from fully realizing the potential of high-speed Internet service.” Colleen Boothby, lawyer for the ad hoc users groups, said: “For too long, business customers have been forced to accept inflated prices and unreasonable practices in the business broadband market because the FCC de-regulated AT&T, Verizon and other traditional providers even though they face little or no competition.” The filing “by these purchasers and competitors is a reluctant acknowledgment that all parties concerned recognize that the FCC lacks adequate data in this area,” said, Glenn Reynolds, vice president for policy at USTelecom said in an interview. “It’s good to see that they are for the first time offering to provide at least some data on the existence of competition for high-capacity facilities after refusing to do so in response to several previous inquiries by the FCC, the state commissions and GAO, among others.”