The FCC’s net neutrality order has become “the hotel Sunday brunch of administrative procedure,” with the reconsideration petitions and rounds of court appeals, said Austin Schlick, FCC general counsel. Verizon offered a “very creative theory” that it could file an early challenge -- and it had to go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit -- because the order amounted to a licensing decision, he said Monday at a webcast Practising Law Institute seminar in New York. With the court’s dismissal of a filing by the carrier before the order was final, “the legal aphorism ‘Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered'” applies, Schlick said. But the punchline is that a court lottery held after timely appeals were filed in several circuits determined that “the case goes where Verizon wants it to go,” he said: the D.C. Circuit, which had ruled against the FCC on closely related issues in the Comcast case.

The “cuts and caps” in the FCC’s Universal Service Fund reform order and the failure to adopt a “sufficient and predictable” funding mechanism for rate-of-return carriers as the fund shifts to support broadband “has already led to a chilling of investment in rate-of-return carriers and the rural areas they serve,” representatives of the Rural Iowa Independent Telephone Association said in a series of meetings at the FCC. “Rural high-cost companies must invest substantial amounts of capital to provide telecommunications services, particularly broadband services, to rural communities,” the group said (http://xrl.us/bmpytb). “Rate-of-return regulation has been the basis for compensating private companies that provide common-carrier utility services for over 100 years. In areas without competition, where the carrier must be able to provide carrier of last resort service, rate-of-return continues to be the best possible means of compensating a private utility.”

Broadband pilots, proposed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski as part of a revamped Lifeline program, have emerged as a likely bone of contention at the agency as work on the order continues prior to a vote Tuesday. The amount proposed by Genachowski is small -- in the $20 million range -- to be paid for by savings as the FCC clamps down on abuse, agency officials said. But some industry and FCC officials question the wisdom of looking at ways of expanding a program that is already getting bigger just paying for traditional phone service.

Work at the FCC is intensifying on changing the Lifeline program that funds phone service for poor people, commissioners from both parties said Friday. A new draft of the Lifeline order circulated Tuesday night, prompting Commissioner Robert McDowell to return to Washington from a World Radiocommunications Conference in Geneva, he noted. Both McDowell and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn told a panel at the Minority Media and Telecom Council conference that the order tries to address waste and other inefficiencies in the subsidy program. Clyburn voiced support for the idea of broadband pilot tests, while McDowell said increases in one part of the Universal Service Fund mean all phone customers must pay more in USF fees unless there are other cuts.

Cuts in government appropriations have stalled some projects at public radio stations. The loss of the Public Telecom Facilities Program (PTFP) last year and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting digital appropriation in the current fiscal-year budget challenged stations to find other ways to continue serving their communities and expand their reach, officials said.

The FCC should extend mandatory service outage reporting requirements to interconnected VoIP providers, NARUC said in a draft resolution for the group’s winter meetings, released Thursday. The outage draft resolution asks the agency to require VoIP providers to report service outage information comparable to other providers, expand the definition of a significant service outage to include VoIP service problems and provide state commissions with “direct and immediate access” to the FCC outage reporting database. Another draft resolution on wireless bill shock “encourages wireless carriers to continue their efforts to streamline consumer access for updated information by investigating and implementing methods to receive immediate information on account usage for each service they have along with usage balances rather than waiting for notifications.” A draft resolution on numbering urges the FCC to address waiver requests to allow VoIP providers to obtain numbering resources directly from the North American Numbering Plan Administration. A draft resolution on the Universal Service Fund Lifeline program supports Lifeline changes that reduce waste, fraud and abuse and which give flexibility to the states to address the problems. A draft resolution on consumer complaints asked the FCC to create a public and searchable complaints database on the the agency’s website.

The FCC ought to make sure it gets the most “'bang for the buck'” from any Universal Service Fund support of broadband pilot projects, the NCTA said. “To do this, the Commission should give preference to Lifeline pilot proposals that do not conflict with existing broadband initiatives focused on low-income populations.” The agency has said “unconstrained growth” of USF hurts consumers, so it “must make every effort to use support in the most efficient manner possible,” an association executive reported telling a Wireline Bureau official. An ex parte filing was posted Wednesday to docket 11-42 (http://xrl.us/bmpv5z). Commissioners are set to vote Jan. 31 on a order about controlling the size of the Lifeline fund (CD Jan 25 p1).

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden said Wednesday he’s watching FCC actions closely as the commission moves forward on a Lifeline order, slated for a vote at the Jan. 31 meeting. Meanwhile, AT&T said in a filing that the record shows most Lifeline customers forced to de-enroll from the program continue to pay for service afterward.

The House Communications Subcommittee plans to be active this year on FCC process reform, cybersecurity, the LightSquared controversy and the future of video, audio and data, Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told reporters Wednesday morning. Walden said he was optimistic about passing spectrum legislation as part of the payroll tax cut bill. And he criticized FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s remarks at the CES show seeking more flexibility from Congress on auction conditions.

The FCC’s questions about adding filing obligations drew no support, in reply comments on a public notice asking about requiring all filings to include all cited material. Initial comments also opposed expanding the rules (CD Jan 11 p10). The Blooston, Mordkofsky communications law firm “concurs with the commenters in the record of this proceeding who have unanimously agreed that the Commission’s proposal, while meritorious in theory, will be unworkable in practice,” it said (http://xrl.us/bmpoye). “The Commission’s proposal, while well-meaning, will impose significant burdens on the public and practitioners and have a deleterious effect on the Commission’s ability to obtain quality input from the public during its public comment cycles. Currently, when commenters rely on data and other sources of information in support of their comments, the practice is to cite that information for support so that the reader can locate the original document for further review if necessary.” The Universal Service for America Coalition backed the CTIA’s request for FCC staff to make public promptly all analyses they rely on in making decisions. The coalition pointed to the Wireline Bureau making a Universal Service Fund study public shortly before commissioners voted on a USF order. The group “agrees with the near universal sentiment of commenters in this proceeding” on filing rules “that docket participants should not be required to submit all non-record material cited in filings into the record,” it said (http://xrl.us/bmpo2g). “Such a requirement is unnecessarily burdensome and would not significantly increase the ability of the public to access information.” Coalition members include Mobi PCS, SouthernLinc Wireless and Thumb Cellular, its attorney Todd Daubert of SNR Denton told us. Replies were posted Tuesday in docket 10-44.