The Arkansas Telehealth Network asked the FCC for a one- year extension of the June 30, 2010, deadline for funding under the commission’s Rural Health Care Pilot Program. In a letter to the Wireline Bureau, the network also sought a waiver of a rule limiting the pilot program to three funding years. The Arkansas network received preliminary approval in the first request for proposals, but a long review at the Universal Service Administrative Co. and “staggered adoption and implementation” of rules and details related to participant sustainability plans “have pushed the timeframe for completion well behind schedule,” it said. “While ATN and the Commission are working together to identify solutions … the fact is that despite ATN’s concerted good-faith efforts a majority of the steps necessary for ATN to obtain funding commitments by the current June 30, 2010 deadline have not been completed, and the timely completion of such steps by the deadline is in serious jeopardy.”

The FCC is considering a recommendation that the Universal Service Fund (USF) Lifeline and Link-up programs be expanded to cover broadband in its National Broadband Plan due to be released in February, said Brian David, director of adoption and use of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative. David spoke Friday at a meeting at which the U.S. Broadband Coalition released a report on “Bridging the Divide.”

The FCC should confirm that subcontractors providing governmental telecom services are exempt from Universal Service Fund contributions as contractors are, Stratos Government Services said on Thursday. All but one of the commenters backed Stratos’ petition asking for declaratory ruling on the matter. Verizon is the only one that said it believes the exemption would be contrary to the agency’s goal of being “competitive neutral,” Stratos said.

Questions about administering the Universal Service Fund show the need for contribution reform, AT&T and Verizon said last week in separate reply comments on a letter by the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) (CD Sept 29 p9). The carriers support replacing the current interstate revenue-based system with one that bases contribution on the number of phone numbers possessed by a company. “The contribution issues that USAC raised, and the comments filed in response to these requests, highlight the flaws inherent in the current revenues-based contribution methodology (not the least of which is determining how to classify complex enterprise offerings for revenue reporting purposes),” AT&T said. “Rather than continuing to dig itself further into a hole by issuing clarifications on an ad hoc basis (in some cases, years after the formal or informal requests were made), the Commission should instead concede” that the revenue-based approach “cannot be salvaged.” Estimating it would take the FCC about 18 months to implement the numbers method after adopting it, AT&T urged the commission to, in the meantime, seek comment on its current Form 499-A and instructions “in an effort to identify and clean-up inconsistencies within those documents beyond the issues already identified by the commenters.”

Native Public Media and the National Congress of American Indians want the FCC to set up a native nations/FCC broadband task force, they said in comments to the commission on a notice seeking comment on high-speed access on tribal lands. They also asked the FCC to create a special tribal office, to reserve seats on the Federal State Board on Universal Service for tribal members and to create an Enhanced Tribal Lands Broadband Fund Program under the Universal Service Fund. Tribes should have priority access to spectrum and the FCC should remove barriers that would keep Native Americans from using the TV white spaces for broadband, they said.

Native Public Media and the National Congress of American Indians want the FCC to set up a native nations/FCC broadband task force, they said in comments to the commission on a notice seeking comment on high-speed access on tribal lands. They also asked the FCC to create a special tribal office, to reserve seats on the Federal State Board on Universal Service for tribal members and to create an Enhanced Tribal Lands Broadband Fund Program under the Universal Service Fund. Tribes should have priority access to spectrum and the FCC should remove barriers that would keep Native Americans from using the TV white spaces for broadband, they said.

The cable and wireless industries joined phone companies in opposing a petition on broadband data collection by state regulators. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners had asked the commission to decide that federal rules don’t limit states’ collection of information from broadband service or infrastructure providers (CD Nov 4 p5). In reply comments Monday, NCTA said states don’t have jurisdiction over broadband Internet because it’s an interstate service. The states’ role “is limited to the functions assigned by Congress under the Broadband Data Improvement Act (BDIA) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA),” the cable association said. CTIA rejected the petition in separate reply comments. “While the FCC may need to take steps to improve the timeliness of the data it provides to states, states already have access to federal data,” the wireless association said. “The petition cites no specific problems regarding access to needed datasets or lack of cooperation from providers.” States have received resistance when trying to collect data for NTIA grants, the D.C. Public Service Commission said. “We don’t believe that voluntary efforts on the part of broadband service providers will be sufficient to achieve” universal broadband. Some providers -- including Verizon and AT&T -- “simply” don’t respond to data requests, and others provide incomplete and sometimes inaccurate data, it said. “Certainly this is what NTIA was trying to avoid when it set out the requirements” in its July 8 notice of funding availability.

Draft universal service reform legislation announced Friday would cover broadband, expand the contribution base and cap high-cost support, said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher D-Va., and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb. This is the third round of legislation the two lawmakers have worked on, and comes after months of negotiations among industry and regional regulators. “The Universal Service Fund is broken,” said Boucher and Terry. Consumers will pay more than 14 percent of long-distance revenue into the fund next year, up from 12 percent in 2009, they said. A hearing on the draft is planned for Nov. 17.

NCTA proposed a two-step process by which parties can ask the FCC to reassess universal service support levels for specific geographic areas. “The presence of one or more unsubsidized wireline competitors generally should be sufficient to ensure that consumers will have access to reasonably priced service even if government subsidies are reduced or eliminated,” the cable association said. In the first step, the petitioner would have to show that either “unsubsidized wireline competitors offer service to more than 75 percent of the customers in an area without support,” or that “the state has found sufficient competition to substantially deregulate the retail rates charged by an incumbent local exchange carrier.” In the second step, the universal service fund recipient in the area would have to show the minimum amount of support needed to serve non- competitive portions of the area, NCTA said. “The burden should be on the ILEC to demonstrate that the total cost of serving areas where it is the sole provider is greater than the total revenues that it potentially can generate from services sold to customers in that area,” NCTA said. “In cases where the ILEC’s rates have been deregulated, any claim that costs cannot be recovered should be subject to particular scrutiny.”

The FCC laid the groundwork for an investigation into special access, issuing a public notice late Thursday “on an appropriate analytical framework” for reviewing issues raised in the commission’s long-pending proceeding. Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the notice last month in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii (CD Oct 9 p1). Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and others renewed their attack on special access charges in comments at the commission as part of its broadband investigation. Comments were due Wednesday on National Broadband Plan Public Notice No. 11, on the impact of middle- mile access on broadband availability and deployment.