An FCC report on rural broadband prescribes government intervention to spur availability and demand. The report, released publicly on Wednesday, was required by Congress in the 2008 Farm Bill and did not require sign off by all commissioners. Instead, writing in the first-person, acting Chairman Michael Copps highlighted common problems affecting rural broadband, including technological challenges, lack of data and high network costs. Copps also urged a revamp of the Universal Service Fund, new rules on network openness and an audit of all spectrum that the FCC has licensed, with an eye on where it is being used effectively or could see more use on a secondary basis.

District of Columbia residents with impaired hearing are signing up for expanded relay service, the Public Service Commission said May 19. So far, 23 Washingtonians have bought Captioned Telephone Relay Service phones that let users listen to a caller while reading word-for-word captions of what’s being said on the phone’s built-in display, the commission said. Hamilton Relay, which runs the city’s relay service, began providing CapTel in November. Customers access it through their local phone service at no additional monthly charge. The service is funded by the city’s Universal Service Trust Fund, underwritten by fees charged local phone customers, and the federal Universal Service Fund. For at least a year, Hamilton plans to offer the $495 CapTel phones to District residents for $99, the commission said.

The FCC shouldn’t lower video relay service rates “until functional equivalence is a reality,” Gallaudet University President Emeritus King Jordan told acting Chairman Michael Copps in a meeting Monday, an ex parte filing said. The FCC is mulling whether to apply new compensation rates for VRS under the interstate telecom relay service fund for the 2009- 2010 fund year (CD May 18 p6). The National Exchange Carrier Association administers the fund and proposed the permanent rates. It has been following a three-year interim plan established in 2007. “NECA-allowed costs do not allow for the absolutely crucial investments that providers must make in order to continue to enhance VRS service and develop new products,” Jordan said. The existing, three-year plan “ensures stable, fair, and predictable rates, thus allowing VRS providers to make long-term plans and investments that will benefit deaf users,” he said. It has “led to product development and distribution; research and development; and interpreter training and professional development.”

A new working group being set up by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has until Dec. 15 to recommend how to integrate the state’s universal service programs in telecom and other industries, the regulator said Thursday. Calling such coordination “vital,” commission Vice Chairman Tyrone Christy and Commissioner Wayne Gardner said in a motion that in its absence eligible households may have missed chances at service. Commissioners voted 5-0 to have the group coordinate universal service programs and analyze whether to integrate programs into a statewide network. The group will recruit individuals from the telecom, natural gas and electric industries with universal service expertise, the commission said. The Departments of Community and Economic Development and Public Welfare will be invited to participate, as will the Office of Consumer Advocate, nonprofits and consumer groups. Given the economy, state mandates and availability of Recovery Act stimulus funding, Pennsylvania needs better coordination in this area, the regulator said. The group is to hold its meeting within 60 days of the Commission order being entered.

Wyoming’s Public Service Commission set the state’s Universal Service Fund assessment level for 2009-2010 at 1 percent of gross intrastate retail telecom revenue, it said Friday. The rate applies to all customer billings beginning July 1. The commission set the weighted statewide average local exchange service rate at $25.05 for the 12-months starting July 1. For that period, the associated support benchmark is $32.57. No Wyoming customer should pay more than $32.57 monthly for basic phone service, excluding taxes, fees, surcharges and charges for custom features and other options, the commission said. The 12 telcos eligible for Wyoming USF support have been sent confidential spreadsheets stating the support they're eligible for. The commission proposes to distribute support totaling aggregate $225,769 monthly, it said.

The 8th U.S. Appeals Court should rehear en banc Nebraska’s appeal of a lower court decision barring the state from making traditional VoIP providers pay into its universal service fund, Nebraska officials said Thursday. A panel of the St. Louis-based court found May 1 that a U.S. District Court in Nebraska properly upheld an injunction Vonage obtained prohibiting Nebraska’s utility commission from assessing the VoIP company (CD May 4, p5). The en banc request challenges what the state called the panel’s “overbroad reading” of the FCC Vonage preemption order that the appeals court cited in rebuffing Nebraska. Contrary to what the 8th Circuit said, Vonage would not have succeeded with a claim to preemption that it deployed to obtain the injunction, the state argued. “Further, the Decision is based on a misapplication of the impossibility exception employed by the FCC to preempt such entry regulations,” Nebraska officials said in petitioning to have the ruling vacated and an en banc rehearing set. “Indeed, the United States and FCC submitted an amicus brief in this case in support of the NPSC, asserting that the Vonage Preemption Order ‘did not address, let alone preempt, the state-level universal service obligations of interconnected VoIP providers…’, and that the impossibility exception did not preclude the NPSC from placing this requirement on Vonage, as the NPSC’s NUSF Order ‘does not present a conflict with the FCC’s rules or policies.” The Nebraska utility commission’s order that Vonage pay into the state fund “does not conflict with any federal regulatory policy or impair the FCC’s authority to regulate the interstate aspect of interconnected VoIP service,” the state said. “In fact, its action is entirely consistent with the FCC’s imposition of USF contribution requirements on Vonage and other interconnected VoIP providers. The ‘impossibility exception’ relied on in the Decision thus does not apply.” In seeking an en banc rehearing, the state faces “an upstream swim,” said Brad Ramsay, general counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “What’s in Nebraska’s favor is that there’s no question but that the court got it wrong. From a policy, legal and commonsense perspective, the May 1 ruling makes no sense. The question is, will the other judges be willing to act or will they defer to their brother jurists? If the judges really look at this case, they should reverse and rehear.” The May 1 ruling stands to imperil state universal service funds and the federal USF, Ramsay said. “Everything is migrating to VoIP -- not necessarily nomadic, but VoIP nonetheless,” he said. “There are 23 states with universal service funds. If those funds aren’t there, the rates in those states will go up significantly, and there will be a greater burden on the federal fund. This is really bad.” NARUC, which filed an amicus brief on Nebraska’s behalf in the earlier appeal, may weigh in on the en banc request as well, Ramsay said.

TracFone Wireless is asking the FCC to change its Universal Service Fund rules to maximize the benefit it could provide to Lifeline customers. The carrier said in a filing last week that its petition seeking a rulemaking would base reimbursement on a single subscriber line charge rate nationwide, regardless of what’s charged by the local incumbent, faced no real opposition. It said the FCC should ask for additional comment.

The 8th U.S. Appeals Court should rehear en banc Nebraska’s appeal of a lower court decision barring the state from making traditional VoIP providers pay into its universal service fund, Nebraska officials said Thursday. A panel of the St. Louis-based court found May 1 that a U.S. District Court in Nebraska properly upheld an injunction Vonage obtained prohibiting Nebraska’s utility commission from assessing the VoIP company (WID May 4 p5). The en banc request challenges what the state called the panel’s “overbroad reading” of the FCC Vonage preemption order that the appeals court cited in rebuffing Nebraska. Contrary to what the 8th Circuit said, Vonage would not have succeeded with a claim to preemption that it deployed to obtain the injunction, the state argued. “Further, the Decision is based on a misapplication of the impossibility exception employed by the FCC to preempt such entry regulations,” Nebraska officials said in petitioning to have the ruling vacated and an en banc rehearing set. “Indeed, the United States and FCC submitted an amicus brief in this case in support of the NPSC, asserting that the Vonage Preemption Order ‘did not address, let alone preempt, the state-level universal service obligations of interconnected VoIP providers…’, and that the impossibility exception did not preclude the NPSC from placing this requirement on Vonage, as the NPSC’s NUSF Order ‘does not present a conflict with the FCC’s rules or policies.” The Nebraska utility commission’s order that Vonage pay into the state fund “does not conflict with any federal regulatory policy or impair the FCC’s authority to regulate the interstate aspect of interconnected VoIP service,” the state said. In seeking an en banc rehearing, the state faces “an upstream swim,” said Brad Ramsay, general counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “What’s in Nebraska’s favor is that there’s no question but that the court got it wrong. … The question is, will the other judges be willing to act or will they defer to their brother jurists?” The May 1 ruling stands to imperil state universal service funds and the federal USF, Ramsay said. “Everything is migrating to VoIP -- not necessarily nomadic, but VoIP nonetheless,” he said.

The FCC extended by one year the freeze on jurisdictional separations and directed the Federal-State Joint Board on Separations to prepare a recommendation for how to comprehensively revamp the separations process, in an order released late Friday. “Extending the freeze will provide stability for carriers that must comply with the Commission’s separations rules while issues related to comprehensive, permanent reform are considered,” the FCC said. The one-year extension to June 30, 2010, is in line with the FCC’s tentative conclusion from March (CD April 28 p7). In the comments phase, most supported an extension, but rural carriers said separations reform should wait until the FCC overhauls the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation. They also asked the FCC to allow changes to category relationships -- measurements of investments and expenses within separations factors. The FCC asked the Joint Board to examine whether separations reform should be deferred pending the other reforms, “or whether it should coincide with such reform,” it said. And, the FCC asked the Joint Board to consider modification of frozen category relationships and jurisdictional cost allocations factors if the freeze is extended again, it said.

Small wireless supported a Corr Wireless petition asking the FCC to review a USAC decision that effectively decreased the level of funding available to competitive eligible telecom carriers under the interim funding cap, in filings at the FCC. The Universal Service Administrative Co. decided funds given up by Verizon Wireless after it purchased Alltel should no longer be counted as part of the fund.