The Wash. Supreme Court upheld a decision by state regulators tha...

(WUTC) had not acted unreasonably when it designated the U.S. Cellular Corp. (USCC) as an eligible telecommunications carrier (ETC) in rural ILEC territories. The WUTC’s decision was appealed by the Wash. Independent Telephone Assn. (WITA), which said the regulatory body should have held a “full adjudicative hearing” because rural ILECs “had a property interest in their designation as sole telecommunications providers” in their service areas. The state court concluded the ILECs hadn’t established “that they had a constitutionally protected property interest” and thus weren’t entitled to such a hearing. It also agreed with a lower court that WITA hadn’t shown that the WUTC had acted arbitrarily, another WITA argument. The WUTC originally gave ETC status to USCC in 1997 for areas where rural ILECs didn’t operate. USCC in 1999 asked the WUTC to expand the ETC designation to include all parts of its service area, including those served by rural ILECs. After the WUTC approved the petition in Dec. 1999, WITA sought dismissal, arguing that USCC hadn’t provided the required level of service to receive universal service funding and the action wasn’t in the public interest. The case was appealed to the state supreme court after 2 lower courts affirmed the WUTC’s action. The Supreme Court said WITA members’ argument that they had a right to be sole ETCs in their service areas was “unsupportable.” It also held that USCC did provide the services required of ETCs and concluded that WUTC had “recognized the 1996’s Act’s interrelated goals of fostering competition and advancing universal service” when it granted the ETC status. The court’s opinion was issued March 20 (Doc. 72428-8).