The deadline for comments on an amendment to the Missoula Interca...

endorsed the amendment which adds a “federal benchmark mechanism” (FBM) designed to ease rate shock in states that already have reduced their intrastate access rates. “The original Missoula Plan recognized the need for an ‘Early Adopter Fund'” for such states, OPASTCO said: “The Plan’s supporters worked with state commissions to develop the FBM, which would target additional funding to states with very high end-user rates and/or state universal service funds that are presumably the result of intrastate access charge reform…. The FBM would not only promote equity for ‘early adopter’ states but would also improve end-user rate comparability for customers across all states.” Now that the early adopter problem has been dealt with, the FCC “should proceed expeditiously with adoption of the Missoula Plan,” OPASTCO said. Alexicon Consulting said its rural telecom clients “have several concerns” with the amendment, though they supported the initial Missoula Plan idea of an early adopter incentive plan. The original plan proposed incentives through reduction of intercarrier compensation charges; the new proposal calls for changes in local rates to customers, which concerns the telcos, Alexicon said: “We are concerned that the addition of any intrastate local service rates into the intercarrier compensation review process will only exacerbate the resistance of state regulators toward the Missoula Plan.”