The USTelecom-brokered agreement on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms includes a $300 million carve-out for a mobility fund, telco executives confirmed Friday. The proposal “doesn’t go into significant detail” into how the money would be spent, but 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.”

Cablevision shares dropped 13 percent Tuesday after the company reported Q2 results. The loss came despite a broader bounce-back among the major stock indices following Monday’s plunge. Analysts had expected better financial and operating results at Cablevision. “For years we have worried that Cablevision would become a victim of its own success,” Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors. The company has among the highest penetration rates for its services and is significantly exposed to Verizon’s FiOS overbuild, he said. “And yet each quarter, their results proved surprisingly resilient, a function of best-in-class execution and best-in-class subscriber demographics. Until now.” Investors may have also expected a new plan to return capital to shareholders, which didn’t materialize, Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker wrote.

The FCC is in the “final stage of our reform process” for the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system, its four members said in a blog post Monday. The agency “will seek to achieve reform in a comprehensive and legally sustainable way that modernizes the current system,” said Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioners Michael Copps, Robert McDowell and Mignon Clyburn. Genachowski had hoped to post the blog last week, when the commission issued a new public notice in the pending reforms, but McDowell raised concerns over the phrasing (CD April 5 p1). An earlier draft of the blog post had hailed Genachowski’s agency for an “unprecedented process” of reform, an FCC official told us. That language wasn’t in Monday’s edition (http://xrl.us/bk6xep).

The FCC began a new notice of inquiry into the speed and depth of U.S. broadband deployment. The so-called Section 706 report has twice found that broadband wasn’t being efficiently or quickly spread throughout the country. Those findings have formed the keystone in commission arguments in defense of such orders as net neutrality, data roaming and the pending Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms. Among the questions in the public notice, released Friday, is whether the FCC should once again revisit its standards. The last two reports relied on a broadband speed benchmark of 4 Mbps down/1 Mbps up. “This is one of our most important duties, one that advances innovation and investment, helps create jobs, and brings much-needed benefits to consumers,” Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement attached to the notice of inquiry. Commissioner Robert McDowell once again attacked the last two 706 reports, saying that “their conclusions were inaccurate and unsettling.” He said he’s particularly interested in hearing “whether this next review should consider the effects of mobile broadband deployment.” Comments are due Sept. 6, replies Oct. 4 in docket 11-121.

The FCC began a new notice of inquiry into the speed and depth of U.S. broadband deployment. The so-called Section 706 report has twice found that broadband wasn’t being efficiently or quickly spread throughout the country. Those findings have formed the keystone in commission arguments in defense of such orders as net neutrality, data roaming and the pending Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms. Among the questions in the public notice, released Friday, is whether the FCC should once again revisit its standards. The last two reports relied on a broadband speed benchmark of 4 Mbps down/1 Mbps up. “This is one of our most important duties, one that advances innovation and investment, helps create jobs, and brings much-needed benefits to consumers,” Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement attached to the notice of inquiry. Commissioner Robert McDowell once again attacked the last two 706 reports, saying that “their conclusions were inaccurate and unsettling.” He said he’s particularly interested in hearing “whether this next review should consider the effects of mobile broadband deployment.” Comments are due Sept. 6, replies Oct. 4 in docket 11-121.

Northern Valley Communications and Kentucky Telephone complained about rules designed to curb “so-called ‘access stimulation,'” in an ex parte filing in docket 01-92. “Ultimately, at a time when the nation’s economy remains in peril and the Chairman is focused on how technology and innovation can create jobs for Americans, the rules proposed by the FCC are unwarranted,” the companies said. “These proposed new regulatory burdens would serve only to kill jobs in rural America, and by attacking free conference calling services would make it more expensive for small businesses and entrepreneurs to collaborate on their ventures.” The companies also took a look at the USTelecom-brokered agreement on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation reform (CD Aug 1 p1). “While the approach suggested by these carriers has many flaws which counsel against its adoption, we noted that this or similar proposals would effectively moot the need to adopt rules specifically addressed at ‘access stimulation,’ because the industry-wide transition to such low rates would effectively prevent carriers from having sufficient revenues to share with their end user customers,” the companies said.

The U.S. GPS Industry Council used its reply comments in the broadband for native nations proceeding to take a swipe at LightSquared in docket 11-41 (http://xrl.us/bk5o48). “In its comments, LightSquared takes credit for the planned distribution of up to 2,000 MSS satellite phones to units of the Indian Health Service. … LightSquared then closes its comments with a request that the Commission consider extending waivers to cover LightSquared’s 4G LTE terrestrial mobile service base stations in order to facilitate deployment of satellite infrastructure on Tribal Lands,” the council said in its comments. “These two aspects of LightSquared’s comments are fundamentally at odds.”

Correction: There are 75 rural telcos at risk of defaulting on RUS loans; a 5 percent reduction of Universal Service Fund cash would put another 23 at risk. Such a reduction would not necessarily strand at-risk companies, because they might still have enough cash to pay off their debts (CD Aug 3 p14).

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s effort to issue another joint public statement by the FCC commissioners on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system reform appeared to be in flux late Thursday, agency officials said. Genachowski had hoped to get his colleagues to sign another Web post, as they did in March. Then, the full commission had promised “a busy spring and summer” of reform work and a promise to move to order’s “within a few months” of the comment cycle’s end in May (CD March 16 p10). Commissioners apparently couldn’t agree on language in the proposed new post, the officials said. Efforts to reach Genachowski’s spokesman for comment were unsuccessful at deadline.

The longer the FCC delays in providing VoIP providers with legal certainty and consistency across their multi-state operations, the more difficult it will be to replace the “growing body of disparate state regulation with a single coherent national regime,” telecom groups said. The VON Coalition, TechAmerica, National Association of Manufacturers, Telecom Industry Association and Information Technology Council wrote the FCC Wednesday. They cited growing state efforts to regulate VoIP.