SunRocket turned down acquisition offers from VoIP company Nuvio and a “couple other firms” in the weeks before it shut down Monday, Nuvio CEO Jason Talley said in an interview. SunRocket instead brought in Sherwood consulting to help wind up the business. “SunRocket investors and the board were looking to move on,” he said. Sherwood spokesman Martin Pichinson did not comment.

Some rural telecom competitors should be exempt from the proposed cap on universal service subsidies because funding comes to them in a different way, ETS Telephone said in a July 17 letter to the FCC. The cap on subsidies to “competitive eligible telecommunications carriers,” or CETCs, should not apply to a few CETCs that report their own costs as a way to set the subsidies rather than rely on the incumbent telecom provider’s costs, said ETS. Few have argued against this exemption; even FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has indicated he would not oppose it, ETS said. CETCs that do calculate based incumbents’ costs, following the “identical support” rule, are the targets of the cap because their costs are rising faster, ETC said. Incumbent phone companies and the small number of CETCs reporting their own costs have caps on their Universal Service Fund payments under different rules and thus are not “part of the supposed problem that the Joint Board [on Universal Service] is trying to address,” ETC said. ETS told the FCC it was writing out of concern over opposition voiced in June comments by consultants Fred Williamson & Associates and the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. ETS said both “casually suggested that the Commission should overlook this defect in the Joint Board’s proposal, and should instead rush to approve the cap without any remedial modification, notwithstanding the detrimental and illogical impact in would have on cost-based rural ETCs and on the consumers who depend on them.”

SunRocket turned down acquisition offers from VoIP company Nuvio and a “couple other firms” in the weeks before it shut down Monday, Nuvio CEO Jason Talley said in an interview. SunRocket instead brought in Sherwood consulting to help wind up the business. “SunRocket investors and the board were looking to move on,” he said. Sherwood spokesman Martin Pichinson did not comment.

Almost 200 SunRocket employees found themselves jobless when the VoIP company shut down with only a short internal memo for explanation. And the company’s more than 200,000 customers received no notice beyond a curt message on SunRocket’s customer service line: “We are no longer taking customer service or sales calls. Goodbye.” Unfavorable regulatory decisions, the unfortunate timing of Vonage developments and an exodus of talent after the departure of SunRocket’s founders contributed to the VoIP company’s demise, said Brian Lustig, who was SunRocket’s media relations director from 2004 until April 2007. SunRocket did not return requests for comment.

State regulators at their summer meeting advanced four more telecom policy resolutions, on numbering, broadband data collection, IP relay fraud and broadband over power line cost accounting. The Telecom Committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) decided against resurrecting a fifth policy matter, a controversial resolution narrowly defeated by its staff subcommittee that would have urged that federal Universal Service Fund reforms be neutral regarding providers and technologies.

The FCC should adopt the temporary cap on Universal Service Fund payments to competitive eligible telecommunications carriers, 800 telecom companies said Tuesday in a letter to the agency. The Coalition to Keep America Connected said the CETC program’s “exploding growth” must be curbed to avert a financial crisis that could harm consumers. The Joint Board’s proposed cap has “broad bipartisan support in Congress,” the petition said. The coalition includes four rural telecom associations lobbying for the cap: The Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, National Telephone Cooperative Association, the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and Western Telecom Alliance.

Almost 200 SunRocket employees found themselves jobless when the VoIP company shut down with only a short internal memo for explanation. And the company’s more than 200,000 customers received no notice beyond a curt message on SunRocket’s customer service line: “We are no longer taking customer service or sales calls. Goodbye.” Unfavorable regulatory decisions, the unfortunate timing of Vonage developments and an exodus of talent after the departure of SunRocket’s founders contributed to the VoIP company’s demise, said Brian Lustig, who was SunRocket’s media relations director from 2004 until April 2007. SunRocket did not return requests for comment.

State regulators at their summer meeting advanced four more telecom policy resolutions, on numbering, broadband data collection, IP relay fraud and broadband over power line cost accounting. The Telecom Committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) decided against resurrecting a fifth policy matter, a controversial resolution narrowly defeated by its staff subcommittee that would have urged that federal Universal Service Fund reforms be neutral regarding providers and technologies.

Policy committees of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) at the group’s summer meeting in New York stumbled over a resolution demanding that federal high-cost fund reform be provider- and technology-neutral. But the panels advanced three others on Internet protocol relay fraud, consumer implications in the transition to digital television (DTV) broadcasting and wireless early termination penalties. Four more telecom resolutions were set for committee consideration Tuesday. Resolutions don’t become official policy until approved by the NARUC board, which meets Wednesday.

The FCC could boost interest in 700 MHz spectrum among small businesses by allowing bids for small geographic blocks, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said at a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council conference Monday.