Don’t stay the Universal Service Fund high-cost interim cap, said...

cap “is a fair and balanced response to the growth of the high cost fund, a very real problem that threatened the sustainability of the universal service system and resulted in rapidly growing costs to consumers who pay for the fund,” Verizon said. The RCA and the carriers seeking a stay have “a vested financial interest in maintaining a system under which competitive ETCs can obtain high cost subsidies without limit,” USTelecom said. “But while such a system may be good for their businesses, it is bad for nearly everyone else.” The RCA and allies raised no new questions of fact or law, it said. Instead, their argument “primarily observe[s] that the rate of growth of support to competitive [ETCs] declined in recent years and predict[s] that the cap will not be effective,” Verizon said. That evidence is no good, said USTelecom. “While Joint Petitioners may take issue with the data relied upon by the Commission, their doing so cannot obscure the fact that competitive ETC support has grown significantly.” Nor did the petitioners show irreparable harm, USTelecom and Verizon said. The RCA and allies make “bold claims about alleged harms resulting from the interim cap,” but don’t “offer any proof that such harms have occurred or are certain to occur in the future,” USTelecom said. If a competitive ETC is harmed by a cap, it added, it can “avoid the cap altogether by filing cost data with the Commission.”