Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain wants less regulation and more tax breaks for the technology industry. After flak from Sen. Barack Obama, Ill., and other Democrats for lacking a tech plan, the Arizonan posted one on his Web site late Thursday. Soon after, ex-FCC Chairman Reed Hundt condemned the plan. At the same time the Democrats were talking technology, with a party platform draft.
FCC handling of an OrbitCom forbearance petition elicited more reaction Thursday. The agency withheld the petition from public view for nearly a year after OrbitCom filed it (CD Aug 14 p1). Wednesday, an FCC spokesman said a draft order on circulation denied the request “because the petition was so deficient on its face.” If that was so, the FCC should have acted sooner, said Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation, a think tank focused on deregulation and free-market policies. “That way, the petitioner, if it chose to do so, could have promptly refiled a beefed-up petition in an attempt to make its case,” he said. The FCC should reform the forbearance process “to prevent something going into effect without the commissioners actively voting on it,” said Dan Mitchell, legal vice president for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. “While we're not familiar with all of the details surrounding the OrbitCom proceeding, it seems to demonstrate that the drop dead date in forbearance proceedings can be problematic.”
The FCC circulated an order dismissing an OrbitCom forbearance request before it made the carrier’s petition public, acting nearly a year after Orbitcom filed the petition. The agency never posted a public notice seeking comment. The 12-month statutory forbearance deadline is Aug. 27. The situation raises red flags about FCC openness and the forbearance process, industry officials said in interviews.
An AT&T proposal to lower intrastate access rates to interstate terminating access rate levels is “deficient,” said the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. Commenting on an AT&T request for interim declaratory ruling and limited waivers related to intercarrier compensation and Universal Service Fund reform, NTCA urged the FCC to accept AT&T’s proposal only if it also adopts an NTCA plan filed last month (CD July 14 p9). NTCA agreed with AT&T that the FCC should move intrastate costs to interstate cost recovery rates including subscriber line charges or originating interstate access charges, and that the FCC should declare that Internet traffic must pay access charges. But NTCA said AT&T’s bid to lower intrastate access rates is “specifically tailored for price-cap carriers, and provides no relief to rural consumers served by [rate-of-return] carriers.” NTCA wants interstate access rates capped at current levels until a permanent access replacement mechanism is set. Access costs not recovered from capped rates would come from USF Interstate Common Line Support (ICLS), it said. NTCA filed comments two days ahead of a Thursday deadline. An AT&T spokesman said “comprehensive reform would fix the vast majority of the problems that these various petitions seek to resolve.”
Commissioners strongly prefer voting ahead of time on two circulating wireline items set for the Aug. 22 FCC meeting, a commission official said Tuesday. One such item is a rulemaking asking how to implement the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008, signed last month by President Bush. The other item seeks comment on ways to improve management and administration of the Universal Service Fund. The USF item responds to a GAO audit citing concerns about waste, fraud and abuse, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters earlier this month (CD Aug 5 p1).
Deaf interest groups, telecom relay providers and others argued details on an FCC plan to give 10-digit phone numbers to deaf people using Internet-based TRS services. They filed comments Friday on a rulemaking (CD June 26 p2) on the 10-digit numbering plan. The FCC sought comment on 911 and other issues, as well as how it might apply customer proprietary network information (CPNI), slamming and other customer privacy rules to relay providers. Relay providers have until Dec. 31 to implement a 10-digit plan.
More telecom industry groups urged the FCC to extend comment and reply deadlines on an AT&T petition seeking interim declaratory ruling and limited waivers related to access charges for VoIP traffic. The FCC should meld the AT&T request with a similar one by Embarq, and extend the deadline for comments to Aug. 26 and replies to Sept. 5, they said in a motion for consolidation filed Friday. The petitioners are the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, National Exchange Carrier Association, Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and the Western Telecommunications Alliance. If the FCC doesn’t formally combine the proceedings, it should extend the comments deadline on the AT&T petition to Aug. 26, the day comments are due on Embarq’s request, and permit parties to file comments on both dockets simultaneously, the alliance said. AT&T and Embarq want a unified switched access rate, it said. Consolidation would let the FCC and interested parties “address efficiently and rationally the common issues of the petitions.” CompTel, which last week urged the FCC to extend deadlines on the AT&T petition to Aug. 28 for comments and Sept. 11 for replies (CD Aug 7 p12), told us Friday that it backs the new proposal. “We would support combining the two petitions and the proposed comment deadlines,” a spokeswoman said. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners also wants more time, it said, filing a motion late Friday. NARUC urged the FCC to extend the deadlines two weeks. “The AT&T proposal is troubling at several levels,” it said. “Many of NARUC’s members lack the staff resources to complete an analysis of the proposal, and get it through required State Commission approval procedures, in the time provided.”
The FCC will reform intercarrier compensation and the Universal Service Fund together, perhaps this year, Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president, told reporters Thursday. “If [reform is] going to happen, it’s going to happen in a package,” Tauke said. Two months ago, he doubted intercarrier reform could happen this year, he said. Taking compensation together with USF distribution and contribution is “a lot to swallow,” but court pressure and growing industry consensus makes him optimistic, Tauke said. Now is the “last best chance” for the telecom and technology sector to ally and reform an “unsustainable” system, he said.
Heightened cable competition, wireless substitution and the economic slowdown hurt Qwest Q2, company officials said in a Wednesday earnings call. The company’s mass-market revenue fell 3 percent year-over-year to $1.5 billion. Wholesale revenue slid 8 percent to $823 million.
The FCC eased regulation of Qwest enterprise broadband services late Tuesday, voting 3-2 to grant the company forbearance on part of a petition seeking relief from Title II and Computer Inquiry rules on its enterprise broadband services. Qwest asked for the same regulatory relief the FCC gave Verizon in a controversial 2006 “deemed granted” ruling. The Qwest order, adopted July 22 and released late Tuesday, was more than a month ahead of the agency’s Sept. 12 statutory deadline for ruling. The FCC denied Qwest forbearance from statutory and regulatory mandates not specific to incumbents, and requirements other than Computer Inquiry requirements that apply to Qwest as an ILEC or Bell operating company.