An FCC order preempting states from imposing traditional phone regulation on Vonage VoIP services didn’t keep Nebraska from assessing state universal service fees on Vonage’s interconnected VoIP, the FCC told a federal appeals court. In a late-filed friend-of-the-court brief to the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis, the FCC said Tuesday that a federal trial court wrongly concluded that the FCC barred Nebraska from enforcing state universal service requirements on Vonage.

The FCC shouldn’t apply an interim cap on the Universal Service Fund high-cost program until it weighs a petition for reconsideration (CD Aug 5 p3) by the Rural Cellular Association and a group of small wireless competitive eligible telecommunications carriers, said the RCA. The RCA sought a stay late Monday, after filing the reconsideration petition Friday, when the interim cap took effect. The wireless CETC group could go to court. Under court rules, the group may file for court relief if the FCC denies the stay, doesn’t act on the motion for stay or denies the reconsideration petition. “If and when this matter reaches a circuit court of appeals,” the RCA said, “the court undoubtedly will have before it data from USAC showing what the Commission’s CETC-only cap actually saved the USF.” If the data show savings below 1 percent “as it does now,” the interim cap “will be greeted by judicial skepticism at best.”

SES Americom will serve the Navajo Nation’s public safety communications system only until Aug. 11 unless integrator OnSat pays the company $4 million plus interest, Robert Kisilywicz, SES Americom chief financial officer, told the FCC Monday. SES provides transponder service to OnSat, which provides the gear and runs the Navajo Nation communications network. SES has a customer that wants to begin using the transponders in question, so if OnSat wants to continue service, it must move to a different satellite, Kisilywicz said in the letter obtained by Communications Daily. “SES Americom is willing to work towards such a final temporary transition arrangement with OnSat provided it can be completed on a reasonable commercial terms, with guaranteed payments, by noon on August 11,” he wrote. According to SES, OnSat on its own turned off service to Navajo Nation libraries and chapter houses in April. OnSat said SES told it to turn off the chapter houses and libraries. Shutting off service was “a quid pro quo for keeping the safety network up,” the OnSat spokesman said. The timing of SES’s notice to OnSat that it would turn off the transponders for non-payment also is disputed. OnSat’s contract expired June 30. SES claims notification was made in April. OnSat heard no threat of shut off of services until July 8 -- “up until that point, it was discussing continuing the service on a month to month basis,” the spokesman said. To protect its Navajo customers, OnSat, as a responsible integrator, could have addressed an impending cut-off of transponder service by supplying Navajo officials with mobile satellite phones, SES said. “This is unrealistic, both technically and economically,” an OnSat spokesman said. The dispute is part of a larger argument involving the Universal Service Administrative Co., which has withheld payments to OnSat and the Navajo Nation on grounds of suspected universal-service rule violations. Non-USAC funds paid for the Navajo public safety agency network, but the satellite transponder service for the entire Navajo Nation network was to covered by E-rate funds, officials have said.

The Rural Cellular Association formally challenged an FCC interim cap on the Universal Service Fund high-cost program, filing a reconsideration petition over the weekend. The group was expected to file a motion for stay on Monday, but hadn’t at our deadline. The reconsideration petition also was signed by small wireless competitive eligible telecommunications carriers. “The high-cost fund ‘emergency’ alleged by the commission is a farce,” said RCA Executive Director Eric Peterson. “The decision to implement the cap is based on inaccurate facts, false assumptions, flawed legal reasoning and ignores Congressional direction and the principle of competitive neutrality.”

The FCC will consider easing an in-market exclusion for roaming agreements, at its Aug. 22 meeting, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters Monday. The FCC will vote on an order on reconsideration addressing issues raised by Sprint, Leap Wireless, MetroPCS, SpectrumCo and T-Mobile in petitions to reconsider last summer’s roaming order (CD Aug 8/07 p1). Martin is also seeking votes on a digital TV fine and an HD-carriage exemption for small cable systems.

In a Friday filing, Embarq sought conditional FCC waiver of price cap rules, allowing Embarq local operating companies to unify interstate and intrastate switched access rates. In a July 17 filing AT&T made its own carrier-specific waiver proposal. “Regulatory arbitrage of switched access charges disproportionately harms rural carriers such as Embarq,” the carrier said. “The arbitrage is fueled in particular by wide disparities between interstate and intrastate terminating switched access rates. Those rate disparities are common and they are the widest in rural areas where lower population densities result in increased per customer costs.” Embarq’s proposal would unify switched access rates by study area, on a revenue neutral basis, by cutting intrastate rates, a spokesman said Friday. The drop would be offset by raising interstate rates less, she said. Waiver would be conditional, by study area, on state commission tariff approval. Unified rates would apply until the FCC implements pending comprehensive intercarrier compensation and universal compensation reforms. “This carrier-specific waiver also can help advance these reform efforts, while having no impact on consumers or the Universal Service Fund during the interim,” the spokesman said. AT&T’s plan would lower intrastate rates, a move offset by increasing subscriber line charges on end-users and raising some originating access rates, the spokesman said. Embarq’s filing argues that AT&T’s approach is not suitable for rural carriers.

Campus piracy provisions remained intact in the higher education reauthorization bill, HR-4137, approved by the House and Senate after months in conference committee. The measure goes to President Bush. Higher- education groups tried and failed to get the copyright provisions removed (WID March 14 p5), but got some of them diluted. The final bill would require schools to make an “annual disclosure” to students warning of civil and criminal penalties for file-sharing and explaining campus disciplinary actions that file-sharers risk. Higher- education groups didn’t oppose that provision. Language was weakened on required institutional use of “technological deterrents” to campus piracy, according to Mark Luker, vice president of university information- technology group Educause. He explained changes in a letter to members. The conference report cites as examples of deterrents “bandwidth shaping, traffic monitoring to identify the largest bandwidth users, a vigorous program of accepting and responding to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices, and a variety of commercial products designed to reduce or block illegal file sharing.” Colleges long have feared being forced to buy anti-piracy systems such as those of Audible Magic, Red Lambda and SafeMedia. Schools consider them expensive to install and run, but vendors vigorously dispute that view (WID March 9/07 p1). The report language says the deterrent section is “technology neutral and [does] not imply that any particular technology measures are favored or required for inclusion in an institution’s plan,” rattling off several vendors’ products and school policies. Luker warned of stronger language on so-called alternatives to piracy. The final bill now says schools “will, to the extent practicable, offer alternatives” to piracy on campus, where previously the bills said schools only needed “plans” for doing so. Most schools have read that as requiring licensed music and movie services as provided by Rhapsody, Napster and other companies. But the language is loose enough for colleges to comply simply by providing their own on-campus services and posting links to commercial services, Luker said. The entertainment industry praised the provisions. David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers Association, said enacting the bill will make sure students are “fully informed” about piracy’s consequences, and noted the bill’s provision of grants to fund piracy solutions. “Congress is sending a strong message that intellectual property is worth protecting,” MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman said. The group said it soon will give schools a “campus briefing book” on the new law, technologies for dealing with piracy and sites offering legal content. RIAA Chairman Mitch Bainwol said enacting the bill will “help protect the integrity of taxpayer- funded university networks” by encouraging schools to use technology that is “available, viable and affordable” to stop piracy and keep students out of the group’s legal sights. Enactment won’t put “undue burdens on our higher education system,” but rather help ensure that students can find “high quality, good paying jobs” in the creative industries, said Copyright Alliance Executive Director Patrick Ross.

The FCC seeks comments on whether to fund stand-alone filtering software under the federal E-Rate program. The commission is also looking at adding interconnected VoIP to the eligible-services list, it said in a notice of proposed rulemaking. The list tells schools and libraries which products and services qualify for discounts under the schools and libraries support mechanism. The FCC released two documents. A public notice seeks comments on program changes that the Universal Service Administrative Co. proposed fiscal 2009. They include clarifications that Ethernet is an eligible digital transmission technology, message archiving is an ineligible component of an e-mail service, video-on-demand servers get no discounts, and computer-based phones, or softphones, are end-user equipment ineligible for discount. A separate rulemaking notice seeks comment on other proposals, such as allowing interconnected VoIP, now ineligible, to qualify. The FCC noted that e-mail software and other eligible components with integral content filtering “are eligible, but a separately priced content filtering module or product is not eligible.” The FCC asks whether it should be eligible. The rulemaking notice seeks comment on whether the FCC eligible services list should include a wider classification of basic phone service, dark fiber, text messaging, firewall service, anti-virus and anti-spam software, scheduling services, telephone broadcast messaging and wireless Internet access applications.

The FCC seeks comments on whether to fund stand-alone filtering software under the federal E-Rate program. The commission is also looking at adding interconnected VoIP to the eligible-services list, it said in a notice of proposed rulemaking. The list tells schools and libraries which products and services qualify for discounts under the schools and libraries support mechanism. The FCC released two documents. A public notice seeks comments on program changes that the Universal Service Administrative Co. proposed fiscal 2009. They include clarifications that Ethernet is an eligible digital transmission technology, message archiving is an ineligible component of an e-mail service, video-on- demand servers get no discounts, and softphones are end-user equipment ineligible for discount. A separate rulemaking notice seeks comment on other proposals, such as allowing interconnected VoIP, now ineligible, to qualify. The FCC noted that e-mail software and other eligible components with integral content filtering “are eligible, but a separately priced content filtering module or product is not eligible.” The FCC asks whether it should be eligible. The rulemaking notice seeks comment on whether the FCC eligible services list should include a wider classification of basic phone service, dark fiber, text messaging, firewall service, anti- virus and anti-spam software, scheduling services, telephone broadcast messaging and wireless Internet access applications.

AT&T, Alltel, Verizon are among 24 companies questioned on how they spend high-cost universal service fund subsidies, the House Oversight Committee said Monday. The fund needs more oversight, chairman Henry Waxman, D-California, told committee members in a memo Monday. He called that goal consistent with the committee’s “strong interest” in ensuring private sector and government accountability. The committee worries about the size and growth of subsidies, which the FCC said exceeded $6 billion total 2006 to 2008.