The USTelecom-brokered agreement on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation...

would allow wireless and satellite companies to draw from it to provide broadband for high-cost areas, Windstream Vice President Mike Rhoda said in a conference call announcing the filing of the deal. The plan was filed jointly at the FCC this morning by six carriers: AT&T, Verizon, Windstream, CenturyLink Frontier and Fairpoint. It picked up an important endorsement from the three biggest rural telecom associations, who filed a separate letter for a “complementary” plan Friday. Executives from the six companies, along with leaders of OPASTCO, NTCA and the Western Telecommunications Alliance held a conference Friday to discuss the plan. Under their proposals, rate-of-return carriers will be qualified for USF cash for broadband starting in 2012, when the plan takes effect. Companies receiving broadband support would have to provide speeds of at least 4 Mbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream. All but rate-of-return carriers would have to meet broadband service and buildout goals, along with designated availability to households, within five years of having received support; rate-of-return carriers would have seven years to meet their goals, the executives said. “It’s an unprecedented agreement,” NTCA Vice President Mike Romano said. As expected, the USTelecom-brokered agreement bans distributing universal service money for broadband in areas where there already is an unsubsidized ISP. Intercarrier compensation would fall to $0.0007 per minute in phases over a maximum of eight years. The support of NTCA, OPASTCO and WTA for the phone company plan has been called important to helping get FCC approval of the proposals in the fall. But a handful of rural carriers broke with their associations last week and issued a new email Friday telling rural carriers that “we must vigorously oppose the ‘large carrier-industry deal’ and urge you to reject this agreement.” The compromise package “encouraged” House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., they said in a news release. “The Universal Service Fund and the intercarrier compensation regime are broken in many ways and both need to be fixed,” they said. “We urge the FCC to use the momentum this proposal has created to complete the reform process this fall.”