Questions about administering the Universal Service Fund show the...
Questions about administering the Universal Service Fund show the need for contribution reform, AT&T and Verizon said last week in separate reply comments on a letter by the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) (CD Sept 29 p9). The carriers…
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support replacing the current interstate revenue-based system with one that bases contribution on the number of phone numbers possessed by a company. “The contribution issues that USAC raised, and the comments filed in response to these requests, highlight the flaws inherent in the current revenues-based contribution methodology (not the least of which is determining how to classify complex enterprise offerings for revenue reporting purposes),” AT&T said. “Rather than continuing to dig itself further into a hole by issuing clarifications on an ad hoc basis (in some cases, years after the formal or informal requests were made), the Commission should instead concede” that the revenue-based approach “cannot be salvaged.” Estimating it would take the FCC about 18 months to implement the numbers method after adopting it, AT&T urged the commission to, in the meantime, seek comment on its current Form 499-A and instructions “in an effort to identify and clean-up inconsistencies within those documents beyond the issues already identified by the commenters.”