OMAHA -- The FCC should take an active role in creating and enforcing broadband guidelines in its Universal Service Fund reform, T-Mobile Corporate Counsel Teri Ohta said at an FCC workshop Wednesday. “We do feel that the federal government ultimately has the responsibility to make sure those funds are distributed properly.” T-Mobile is worried that giving states authority over broadband regulations will lead to a confusing patchwork of regulations that will make it difficult to deploy broadband, Ohta said.

Representatives of the Rural Cellular Association and its member companies urged in various meetings at the FCC that the commission adopt a “cost-model” for funding allocation as it makes changes to the Universal Service Fund, according to an ex parte letter. The RCA members “emphasized the efficiency gains of truly portable funding that would direct support to those carriers that successfully capture customers,” the letter said. “Adherence to a system that embraces portability of funding could control costs without resorting to phaseouts of funding to competitive carriers.” RCA members also warned that a reverse auction approach could prove anticompetitive. “Zero-bids by larger carriers could effectively wipe out competition” and the FCC should put in place “safeguards to protect against any such ‘gaming’ of an auction process, if ultimately utilized,” RCA said.

MetroPCS and Leap Wireless are interested in assets that AT&T might have to divest as a condition on its $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA if the deal gets approved, the prepaid carriers’ executives said during a J.P. Morgan conference with investors on Tuesday. Meanwhile, while panelists at a Broadband Breakfast Club event agreed that divestiture is highly likely, they debated over a possible approach to review the deal.

Staff in the office of FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker was lobbied on more than a dozen occasions by Comcast, the NCTA, cable company rivals, nonprofit groups and others as she considered a job offer at Comcast, agency records show. Since April 18, when Baker privately recused herself from voting on anything at the FCC (CD May 16 p7), the lawyers who advise her also were visited by executives of AT&T, the CTIA, News Corp., Verizon and other companies and public interest groups. Baker’s not the first FCC member to directly leave for a large company regulated by the agency, though it’s been decades since that’s believed to have last occurred, said several who have long watched the commission.

Staff in the office of FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker was lobbied on more than a dozen occasions by Comcast, the NCTA, cable company rivals, nonprofit groups and others as she considered a job offer at Comcast, agency records show. Since April 18, when Baker privately recused herself from voting on anything at the FCC (WID May 16 p9), the lawyers who advise her also were visited by executives of AT&T, the CTIA, News Corp., Verizon and other companies and public interest groups. Baker’s not the first FCC member to directly leave for a large company regulated by the agency, though it’s been decades since that’s believed to have last occurred, said several who have long watched the commission.

Leaders of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and the Iowa Telecommunications Association gave a cool reception on NCTA’s proposal to freeze the RUS broadband loan program. The RUS relaunched its troubled broadband loan program earlier this year and published interim rules. The comment period on the proposed rules closed last week. In its filing with RUS, the cable association said the broadband loan program was structured as if high-speed broadband suffered under geographic monopolies like old water and electric systems (CD May 16 p14). Offering broadband subsidies to telcos in areas where cable already offers it puts government in the “totally inappropriate role for a government agency,” by “picking winners and losers in the marketplace.”

Google has become a platinum sponsor of the University of Melbourne’s Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society (IBES) and will provide funding for new research grants to improve the development of new broadband applications and services.

Approving the AT&T/T-Mobile deal would be a “historic mistake,” Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., told FCC commissioners at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Friday on commission process reform. Other subcommittee members touched only lightly on AT&T’s plan to buy T-Mobile. Many debated more generally whether FCC conditions on transactions should be specific to the given deal.

Meredith Baker’s surprise June exit from the FCC has left Republicans scrambling to find a replacement on short notice. Under the process set up by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., interested Republican senators will forward recommendations to his staff, and a series of interviews will follow. It’s then up to McConnell to recommend a nominee to the White House.

Broadband reclassification is once again haunting the FCC’s proceedings, this time as rural telcos seize on broadband’s Title I status to lobby on Universal Service Fund reforms. The commission elected to take a Title I approach in its net neutrality order (CD Dec 2 p1), but in recent weeks, executives of rural telcos have begun to argue that proposals to roll universal service cash into a Connect America Fund for broadband will raise “a host of legal and practical complications” under Title II (CD May 9 p13).