The business of Internet, wireless, and telecom law.
On April 18, 2011, comments were due for the USF Reform Notice of Proposed Rule Making and Further Notice of Proposed Rule Making. Various parties filed 130+ comments. Reply comments are due on May 23, 2011. USF reform comments were filed by ILECs, RLECs, CLECs, state commissions, fiber providers, cable companies, mobile providers, associations, and [...]
On February 9, 2011, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on numerous proposed changes to “fundamentally modernize” the USF (Universal Service Fund) and another subsidy program called the “intercarrier compensation system.” The USF “High Cost Fund” is a multibillion dollar annual subsidy created in [...]
The Recovery Act NTIA winners are waiting for millions of dollars of stimulus funding. The NTIA winners receiving the largest grants will install fiber on thousands of miles of poles. These NTIA fiber winners will be the new competitors to the ILECs who own the poles. The FCC is trying to address the pole problem [...]
Universal Service Reform has been in the FCC “reform hopper” for more than 10 years. Commissioner McDowell correctly labeled the USF program “antiquated, arcane, inefficient and just downright broken.” Fixing USF is anything but easy because while you can move USF money from one bucket to another, lowering the fee will take away government subsidies [...]
Technorati Tags: FCC,NTIA,Cisco,Alcatel-Lucent,FTTH,Fiber,Recovery Act,BTOP On Friday, July 26, 2009, the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) granted a “limited waiver” for the Buy America restriction in the Recovery Act covering certain types of equipment that may be required for broadband projects. The NTIA is responsible for overseeing the process of delivering $4.7 billion in stimulus [...]
Technorati Tags: FCC,National Broadband Plan,ARRA The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act ("ARRA”) appropriated $7.2 billion for various broadband projects. The primary goals of the ARRA broadband provisions are 1) to increase broadband penetration for the unserved, both rural and urban, 2) to increase broadband adoption for the “underserved,” and 3) to deliver new jobs. The [...]
This month the FCC narrowly avoided addressing the messy political hot-potato of comprehensive intercarrier compensation reform. Very few, even inside the industry, have a full grasp of the complex problems involved with reform. On November 5, 2008, the FCC issued a lengthy order addressing the dial-up reciprocal compensation issues related to the Core Communications order [...]
The intercarrier compensation scheme is a mess. On this all parties agree. Over the years, the FCC moved from the role of regulator overseeing compensation payments that were enforced through tariffs between carriers to becoming a collector and distributor of billions of dollars of collected funds. There is little agreement on how to implement a [...]
There has been a great deal of talk about open mobile applications, devices and access since last year’s FCC 700Mhz auction order for open mobile devices. The open mobile proposal was teed up by Google as a requirement for the successful bidder of the 700Mhz C Block. The C Block covered the nation with a [...]
On July 23, 2008, a new 911 statute was entered into law. The “New and Emerging Technologies (NET) 911 Improvement Act of 2008” (the NET 911 Act) requires the FCC to enact rules implementing the Act’s provisions within 90 days of the effective date of the legislation, or October 21, 2008. The legislation was designed [...]
