Sixteen wireless companies warned Senate leaders that an FCC-prop...
Sixteen wireless companies warned Senate leaders that an FCC-proposed temporary cap on universal service funding for competitive rural companies, such as wireless, easily could become permanent. “The FCC suggests that the interim cap would only last until long term…
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reforms are adopted, yet it has neither a deadline nor an incentive to complete long-term universal service reform,” the companies said in a letter sent Tuesday. A competitors-only cap “would slow momentum toward appropriate reform of the universal service system that is needed to more effectively promote both broadband and mobile services across the country,” they told Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Ranking Member Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. A Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service reform plan is no better, the letter said. “The board’s idea that regulators are going to select a single provider in each area to receive support for wireline, broadband and mobility, respectively, turns the 1996 [Telecommunications] Act on its head,” the carriers wrote. “Further, the proposal to delegate to state commissions the ability to select a favored recipient of funding for each service in each area… is fraught with opportunities for jurisdictional and regulatory conflict.”