FCC Wireless Bureau approved National Exchange Carrier Assn. (NEC...
FCC Wireless Bureau approved National Exchange Carrier Assn. (NECA) plan to increase amount of universal service funding given to rural, high-cost telephone companies to cover their local switching costs. NECA’s plan is expected to increase local switching support 9.7%…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
to $76.4 million annually. However, bureau denied another NECA request to give supplemental payments to telcos that otherwise would receive less high-cost support on monthly basis than they received in Dec. 2001, last month before bureau adopted different formula for determining such support. Bureau said that because it had concluded that current formula produced appropriate support for those small “average schedule carriers” it didn’t see need for supplemental payments. Its order questioned whether supplemental payment plan stemmed from NECA’s preference for different formula for determining high-cost universal service support: “NECA apparently believes that any reduction in support resulting from the adoption of NECA’s preferred EAPL [Expense Adjustment Per Loop] formula is warranted, while any reduction resulting from the CPL [Cost Per Loop] formula is not.” FCC favors CPL formula.