USTA made another plea at the FCC for ‘nondominant’ regulatory tr...
USTA made another plea at the FCC for “nondominant” regulatory treatment of wireline-based Internet access services, arguing in an April 10 ex parte letter that there were plenty of competing broadband service platforms, and cable companies were the dominant…
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providers. The association also urged the FCC to require all providers of broadband services to contribute to the universal service fund. USTA said ILECs needed flexibility to structure their offerings to the needs of their customers: “ILECs wishing to offer broadband transport via private carriage or as a telecommunications component of a single integrated Internet access service should be permitted to do so.” At the same time, ILECs should have the option of continuing to provide DSL as common carriage, the letter said. If that option is denied, “the levels of broadband deployment in rural America will recede” because rural ILECs won’t have “the flexibility to select the regulatory framework” that best suits them, USTA said. USTA also urged the Commission to “reaffirm” its jurisdiction over DSL service used for Internet access: “It is imperative that there be one national broadband policy and not multiple, and possibly inconsistent, state broadband policies.”