FCC Weighing Lifeline Cap, ‘Full Certification’ and Bundling Requirements
The FCC is considering capping the Link Up program, requiring what it’s calling “full certification” that customers are actually poor and may require Lifeline vendors to offer bundled broadband and voice service, telecom officials said. Staff is trying to finish an order on Lifeline for the December meeting and lobbyists are flooding the eighth floor hoping to prevent a cap, certification and bundling requirements, ex parte notices in docket 11-42 showed.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
"A mobile phone is no longer a luxury,” Nexus said in an ex parte notice released Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bmisyi). “Full participation in the economy requires a mobile phone” and “Lifeline and Link Up funding make this possible for millions,” the Lifeline telecom provider said. “Without this funding many would go without any type of phone service, and others would be forced to choose between essentials -- phone vs. heat, phone vs. food, etc."
Commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn seem to have deep reservations to a cap on Lifeline, but staff is still weighing the matter, a telecom lobbyist said. Not everyone is opposed to a cap per se. A group calling itself the Link Up for America Coalition said if the FCC imposes a cap on the program, “the wireless value should be in the same proportion as the wireline.” A cap on the Link Up program “should then be approximately $23.50 for wireless service (i.e., $45.17 is to $30 as $35.50 is to $23.58),” the coalition said in its ex parte notice (http://xrl.us/bmisyz). “Any amount lower for wireless services would not be reasonably comparable to the revenue."
The cap question has generated the most comment and controversy, but Lifeline vendors are also concerned about bundling requirements, the record showed. “We would hope that the commission would take a realistic view and let [eligible telecommunications carriers] experiment and do some testing before they impose any kind of broadband requirement,” TracFone lawyer Mitchell Brecher said. Of TracFone’s 18 million customers, about 3 million are in the Lifeline program, he said.
OPASTCO asked the FCC “to include rural incumbent local exchange carriers ... as participants in the broadband pilot program, the group said in its ex parte notice (http://xrl.us/bmiszb). “This is because a Lifeline/Linkup broadband pilot that is successful in urban areas served by large carriers will not necessarily be effective in rural areas served by small and mid-sized carriers."
The FCC is also weighing rules that would require Lifeline subscribers to prove they are actually poor, telecom officials said and ex parte notices showed. Nexus said “full certification” would “shift the burden to low income consumers to gain access to a scanner, photocopier,fax machine, etc. in order to transmit proof of poverty to the ETC. Moreover, deceitful third parties intent on committing fraud can still circumvent such a system, it said: Recent incidents in Missouri demonstrate that even in a “full certification” it is still possible for unscrupulous parties to enroll unqualified consumers.” If an order is to be voted on at the Dec. 13 meeting, it must circulate by Tuesday.