The Wyoming Public Service Commission is to consider at its meeting Thursday a request by Embarq to change its disbursement from the state Universal Service Fund (Docket No. 70009-319-TA-08).

Deutsche Telekom’s offer to invest 2 billion euros in broadband for unserved rural areas in exchange for a regulatory break is “dangerous,” rival providers said Tuesday. The proposed deal comes ahead of various EU and German state and federal elections next year and aims to push out of the market alternative, tailor-made solutions for broadband in rural areas, such as wireless broadband, telecommunications attorney Axel Spies said for the German Competitive Carrier’s Association. Germany doesn’t have a universal service fund, and DT has argued for years that it’s uneconomic to bring broadband to rural parts of the country, he said. Now the incumbent has reversed course, saying it will do that if it receives a “regulatory holiday” from the government, Spies said. The associations believes that competition is necessary to close the broadband gaps, to avoid giving DT back its monopoly, he said. To make matters worse, Spies said, DT wants higher local loop rates in Germany and wants regulator BNetzA to freeze them for 10 years. If approved, DT’s proposal would set back market liberalization and could make rivals’ 40 billion euros worth of investment partly or entirely worthless, he said. This isn’t the first time DT has sought regulatory relief. Its proposal to deploy VDSL in return for deregulation remains tied up in court after the European Commission expressed opposition, Spies said.

Rural phone companies met Tuesday with members of the Obama-Biden transition team to discuss proposals for broadband incentives in the economic recovery package, executives said. Verizon, AT&T, Qwest, and USTelecom met with the team last week to offer suggestions, company officials said. Documents from the meetings are starting to make their way to Change.gov, the transition team’s Web site. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to publicize meetings with business representatives, to post summary documents and solicit public commit.

Improved audit processes would improve distribution of Universal Service Fund money, the National Exchange Carrier Association said in reply comments to an October FCC inquiry into how it might strengthen USF management, administration and oversight (CD Nov 17 p6). The FCC Office of Inspector General has identified “a large portion of payments … as erroneous due to documentation issues or audit disclaimers,” NECA said, citing a recent OIG report that the high-cost fund has a 23.3 percent error rate: “Reporting these as ‘erroneous’ appears to materially overstate the extent of actual incorrect or improper high cost disbursements.” In separate reply comments, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance agreed that USF audits are in a bad state. “While some [ITTA members] identified few discrete problems, others described audits that, when held against multiple state commission audits spanning three decades … were the ‘worst … ever seen,'” ITTA said. Members had common criticisms, including auditors’ knowledge of telecom, unclear FCC document retention rules and an inefficient audit process, it said.

Deutsche Telekom’s offer to invest 2 billion euros in broadband for unserved rural areas in exchange for a regulatory break is “dangerous,” rival providers said Tuesday. The proposed deal comes ahead of various EU and German state and federal elections next year and aims to push out of the market alternative, tailor-made solutions for broadband in rural areas, such as wireless broadband, telecommunications attorney Axel Spies said for the German Competitive Carrier’s Association. Germany doesn’t have a universal service fund, and DT has argued for years that it’s uneconomic to bring broadband to rural parts of the country, he said. Now the incumbent has reversed course, saying it will do that if it receives a “regulatory holiday” from the government, Spies said. The associations believes that competition is necessary to close the broadband gaps, to avoid giving DT back its monopoly, he said. To make matters worse, Spies said, DT wants higher local loop rates in Germany and wants regulator BNetzA to freeze them for 10 years. If approved, DT’s proposal would set back market liberalization and could make rivals’ 40 billion euros worth of investment partly or entirely worthless, he said. This isn’t the first time DT has sought regulatory relief. Its proposal to deploy VDSL in return for deregulation remains tied up in court after the European Commission expressed opposition, Spies said.

Rural phone companies met Tuesday with members of the Obama-Biden transition team to discuss proposals for broadband incentives in the economic recovery package, executives said. Verizon, AT&T, Qwest, and USTelecom met with the team last week to offer suggestions, company officials said. Documents from the meetings are starting to make their way to Change.gov, the transition team’s Web site. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to publicize meetings with business representatives, to post summary documents and solicit public commit.

Rural phone companies met Tuesday with members of the Obama-Biden transition team to discuss proposals for broadband incentives in the economic recovery package, executives said. Verizon, AT&T, Qwest, and USTelecom met with the team last week to offer suggestions, company officials said. Documents from the meetings are starting to make their way to Change.gov, the transition team’s Web site. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to publicize meetings with business representatives, to post summary documents and solicit public commit.

The FCC Wireline Bureau seeks comment on a petition by Maritime Communications/Land Mobile LLC challenging a decision that its Waterway Communications System and Mobex Network Services subsidiaries are CMRS carriers required by law to contribute directly to the universal service fund. Comments are due Jan. 14, replies Jan. 29.

The Wyoming Public Utilities commission is to consider at its meeting Tuesday a Qwest filing for authority to enter into an agreement with QuantumShift Communications on unbundled network elements, ancillary services and resale interconnection (Docket 70000-1404-TK-08 and 70054-7-TK-08). The commission also is to decide on a TCT West filing for authority to make an interconnection agreement with Bresnan Broadband (Docket 70114-23-TK-08 and 70014-24- TK-08), a Qwest filing for continued waivers of some requirements of telecom service quality rules and request for confidential treatment (Docket 70000-1399-TA-08), and an Embarq tariff filing for authority to increase the federal Universal Service Fund debit applied to local service access line charges and to raise associated rates for consumer and business bundles (Docket 70009-316-TT-08).

Carrier contributions to the Universal Service Fund will decline 16.7 percent in Q1 2009, due mostly to falling high- cost support requirements, the FCC said on Monday. Next quarter, carriers must contribute 9.5 percent of their long distance revenue to USF. That’s 1.9 percentage points less than Q4, and 0.7 less than Q1 last year. To set the carrier “contribution factor,” the agency divides projected carrier revenue by expected USF subsidies for a given quarter. Of an estimated $1.84 billion in Q1 subsidies, about $1.06 billion is for the rural high-cost program, $525.74 million for the E-rate program, $204.89 million for low-income support and $49.49 million for the rural health-care program. Support requirements for the high-cost program dropped most, falling $120 million from Q4. The interim cap on the competitive eligible telecom carrier (CETC) portion of the high-cost fund is partially responsible for the drop, said Curt Stamp, president of the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Association. An industry official estimated that the CETC cap reduced demand on the high-cost fund by about $64 million. The five-month CETC cap took effect in August, but apparently took an extra quarter to kick in, Stamp said. The contribution factor decline could relieve some of the short-term emergency behind USF reform efforts, but ITTA hopes the FCC and Congress won’t lose focus, he said.