Rural Carriers Ask FCC for Two More Weeks To Craft USF Reform Plan
Rural telcos reported progress but asked the FCC Wednesday for a couple more weeks to try to develop consensus proposals for reforming universal service funding for rate-of-return (RoR) carriers, said an ex-parte filing by WTA -- Advocates for Rural Broadband.…
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Under prodding from the FCC to develop common proposals, representatives of WTA, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, the National Exchange Carrier Association, NTCA, USTelecom and others updated commission officials on the status of their efforts since April 16. That's when FCC officials asked the telco associations to develop a broad industry plan within a month, but it became clear recently that they hadn't reached a consensus (see 1505150046). In their filing, the groups said they had reached agreement on a number of issues but others remained unresolved for a variety of reasons, "including disagreements between certain representatives and insufficient time to work out the details of certain proposals and options." The groups asked for a two-week extension, until June 3, "to continue to negotiate a comprehensive plan for future RoR high-cost support," the filing said. FCC officials seemed receptive to the industry efforts, one telco official said. "Things are fluid. Hopefully we'll get a little more time to submit a framework," the official said. "We're trying to make sure the plan is all-encompassing," addressing proposals for carriers wanting to move to model-based support and rural group "data connection service" (DCS) proposals for carriers wanting revisions to the current mechanisms to facilitate stand-alone broadband support. The FCC has asked the groups to modify their DNS proposals by including some additional constraints, the telco official said. "So we're trying to make that happen."