The Federal-State Joint Board asked for comment on 4 proposals to...

At that time, the joint board asked for comment on 3 support issues: (1) Whether the FCC should adopt a support mechanism based on forward-looking or embedded costs. (2) If, in determining support, the Commission should consider consolidating multiple study areas within a state support. (3) If the FCC should modify rules on universal service support for transferred exchanges. The joint board asked for comment by Sept. 16, replies Oct. 3. Commenters also were invited to “supplement the record” with new issues or facts raised since last year’s comment period. Proposals include: (1) A 4-year transition to a new State Allocation Mechanism (SAM) in which the FCC would make high-cost and lifeline allocations to individual state accounts, maintained by the Universal Service Administrative Co. Each state could set the distribution of its allocation to eligible telecom carriers (ETCs), subject to FCC guidelines. (2) A 3-stage reform whose first stage would combine all study areas within a state owned by a single company, move larger rural carriers to the FCC’s “high-cost model” for determining support and freeze per-line support for incumbent rural LECs when competitive entry occurs. Support would be based on each ETC’s own costs. (3) A “universal service endpoint reform plan” (USERP) that ups reliance on state commissions for wireline LEC support and proposes a new way to allocate universal service funds to competitive ETCs. (4) A “holistically integrated” plan that incorporates elements of the other 3 plans and the intercarrier compensation proposal submitted by NARUC’s task force.