CompTel said its competitive-carrier members face “significant market barriers” in China, Egypt, India, Germany Argentina and South Africa. The countries aren’t complying with World Trade Organization obligations or U.S. telecom trade agreements, CompTel said in comments filed Monday with the U.S. Trade Representative. The association said Argentina unfairly discriminates regarding universal service funding. China has “burdensome” capitalization requirements and it hasn’t carried out its duties under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), CompTel said. Egypt has failed to provide under GATS full market access and national treatment for fixed line voice and data service providers, including international services, it said. Germany also has failed to fulfill all its GATS promises, it lacks “transparency and objectivity,” and it has failed to live up to its access and interconnection duties, CompTel said. India has “discriminatory universal service and regulatory fees, excessive pricing of leased lines, burdensome and unnecessary regulation relating to encryption and network monitoring, and excessive annual regulatory fees,” it said. South Africa provides no access to submarine cable landing stations and it may impose foreign-ownership limits on service providers, CompTel said.

Uncertainty and complexity in the intercarrier compensation system have held back broadband investment, Verizon said. In an ex-parte meeting last week with the FCC broadband team, the carrier said access fees for advanced services vary widely and “may depend on unresolved regulatory classifications and jurisdictional determinations that are unknown or irrelevant.” Verizon showed the team its September 2008 revamp plan for intercarrier compensation. The commission should “make clear in its National Broadband Plan that intercarrier compensation reform should ultimately result in a regime that includes a reasonable transition to a uniform default terminating rate for all carriers, provides opportunities for companies to recover a portion of lost revenues from their own end users, and ensures that a portion of other lost revenues may be recovered through a time- limited new recovery mechanism that would be part of the Universal Service Fund,” the carrier said. The FCC is considering USF spending cuts (CD Dec 10 p1). Verizon said it supports high-cost support for “truly high cost” areas that don’t “have competitive providers serving without support.”

Carriers would have to pay a record 14.1 percent of their long-distance revenue to the Universal Service Fund in the fourth quarter, if the FCC adopts the contribution factor proposed Friday. The figure is 1.8 percentage points higher than the fourth quarter, and 1.2 points higher than the third quarter’s 12.9 percent, which was the previous record. The announcement came as the FCC broadband team considers several cuts for the Universal Service as recommendations for the National Broadband Plan (CD Dec 10 p1). The Universal Service Administrative Co. said it would need to collect $2.1 billion from carriers in Q4. To set the carrier “contribution factor,” the commission divides the amount needed by projected carrier revenue. Of $2 billion in anticipated USF support, about $1.1 billion is projected for the rural high-cost program, $544.3 million for the E-rate program, $310 million for low-income support and $51.8 million for the rural health-care program. The low-income program saw the largest increase in support, rising about $48.3 million from last quarter.

Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell said the commission should give “serious consideration” to re-purposing the Universal Service Fund to help pay for broadband. Powell answered questions Friday during a live online chat in his capacity as honorary co-chairman of Broadband for America. “The USF is really about subsidizing phone service, but increasingly and eventually, broadband will become more important and more indispensable,” Powell said. “The USF should recognize that and adjust.” Neither the government nor the private sector acting alone can make broadband universal in the U.S., Powell said. “This is a massive and very expensive project,” he said. “The FCC estimates that it might cost as much as $350 billion to deploy a single fiber network to every home in America. In a public deficit environment one cannot imagine government ponying up that kind of money. So, private investment will be critical. At the same time, private industry needs government support in many ways -- developing a proper regulatory environment, helping secure rights of way and local access to build infrastructure are examples. Also, both sides want to increase adoption.” Asked how to increase adoption rates, Powell said the U.S. “needs to do a better job of showing and demonstrating why and how these connections can improve every day lives, advance educational opportunity for their kids, increase their options for career enhancement, and manage their health.” Powell also stressed the importance of getting more spectrum online for commercial use. “Wireless broadband is going to be a huge component of the broadband world,” he said. “For example, African-Americans have one of the lowest adoption rates for wireline service, but one of the highest rates of using data on mobile phones. Getting more spectrum and increasing efficiency of its use is critical.” Powell, along with the other honorary co-chairman of the group, former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., made a commercial that started airing in some markets Dec. 6 -- www.broadbandforamerica.com/video.

Using the Internet for elections raises serious security and privacy concerns, said technologists and others in comments at the FCC on a National Broadband Plan public notice on digital democracy. While many supported webcasting of government meetings, some warned that putting any government process on the Web risks disenfranchising people without broadband access. And counties said they opposed national mandates.

Using the Internet for elections raises serious security and privacy concerns, said technologists and others in comments at the FCC on a National Broadband Plan public notice on digital democracy. While many supported webcasting of government meetings, some warned that putting any government process on the Web risks disenfranchising people without broadband access. And counties said they opposed national mandates.

The FCC needs to make solving the digital divide a high priority for its broadband plan, Commissioner Michael Copps said at a Practising Law Institute conference Thursday. People are starting to realize that the broadband plan is not just “technospeak from broadband geeks” but can lead to policies that improve peoples’ lives, said Copps, who was introduced at the conference by Chairman Julius Genachowski. But if policymakers don’t get it right, the result could be “more and even wider divides in this country,” Copps said.

CenturyLink told the FCC not to wait for a comprehensive Universal Service Fund overhaul in the National Broadband Plan to fix the high-cost support mechanism for “non-rural” carriers that serve high-cost areas with too many lines to be considered “rural” under the statutory definition. In meetings Tuesday with aides to Commissioners Michael Copps and Robert McDowell, CenturyLink said the current rulemaking responding to a 2005 remand by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “offers an opportunity to move in the right direction toward more targeted support that is used for broadband deployment,” an ex-parte filing said. The company fears it could take “several years” until the FCC adopts a broadband support mechanism, it said. The commission is expected to issue a further notice of proposed rulemaking soon about the remand (CD Dec 2 p8).

Governments of all sizes must come together to bridge the digital divide, said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn at an FCC workshop Wednesday on spurring broadband use among minorities and other underserved communities. Federal, state and local governments each do certain things right, Clyburn said. “If we recognize where our strengths are, where our abilities are, and recognize that no man is an island [and] it’s going to take all of us to uplift all of us, then indeed we have an opportunity to get it right,” she said.

The FCC broadband task force is considering some cuts for the Universal Service Fund that it will recommend in the National Broadband Plan due in February, a commission official said Wednesday. The FCC wants to change the focus of USF to broadband, but realizes simply adding broadband as a supported service would raise the already exorbitant contribution factor that carriers use to pay into the fund, the official said. Commissioners haven’t seen the proposals, but some industry players are already sounding alarm bells. FCC eighth floor staff were briefed on several aspects of the broadband plan as it is evolving late Wednesday, but were asked not to share the details.