USF Cap, Tech Neutrality May be in Opposition, State Official Says
The FCC’s desire to cap the Universal Service Fund may collide with “the rubric” of technological neutrality in considering broadband projects, Washington Utilities and Transportation Commissioner Phil Jones told FCC officials during a panel. “The world you're describing is not the world we're living in,” he said Wednesday. “The rubric of ’technology-neutral’ means ‘unlimited funding.'” Capping the fund will cause an array of trade-offs: Whether to focus on high speed or fuller coverage, or whether to focus on better service metrics or companies’ management capabilities, Jones said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Consumers Union Research Director Mark Cooper said the best course for the FCC is to focus on wireless broadband. “There is no trade-off. This is a no-brainer: Wireless communications … are a fact and will be the center of the communications ecology,” he said. “There is no doubt about it: Mobile communications are infinitely more valuable than fixed computers.” If the commission decides to set national speed standards for service, it will “get intense innovation” by providers who will use any available means and “then you won’t worry about whether you have fiber every place,” Cooper said.
The FCC doesn’t have to choose any technology because the various networks “are complimentary,” said Dave Bickett, CEO of three rural telcos. He said that as wireless grows, it’s becoming increasingly important to “push the fiber deeper into the network.” In rural areas, fiber is actually cheaper than copper wire, anyway, Bickett said. His companies are able to provide broadband in every part of their territories because of USF support. They've tried to offer mobile broadband as a revenue generator in the hopes that it would help them build fiber further out, but “there is an adoption issue,” Bickett said. Calix executive David Russell referred the “unified access infrastructure.” He said that “USF today in the high-cost areas has been very successful. One of the reasons it’s successful is that it enables high-cost rural providers to leverage private capital.”
The FCC’s focus on curbing USF costs shouldn’t distract from the main point of universal service, said Viaero Wireless General Counsel Andrew Newell: “The current system, as bloated as it is, as wasteful as it is, is at least focused on consumers.” The current per-line funding system “is not a bad system,” whereas reverse auctions or voucher programs would tend to eliminate the competitive pressures to keep costs down, Newell said. He said he hopes the commission adopts “a flexible” funding system for universal service, because no one can be sure what markets and technologies will demand in a few years. Generally, the commission should set funding levels and “if you see no one comes in and invests, you know the support is too low,” Newell said. On the other hand, if the market suddenly becomes crowded, “you know the support is too high,” he said.
The Rural Utilities Service has had to focus on changing conditions through its broadband loans and broadband stimulus programs, said Senior Advisor Christopher McLean. “When we look at particular projects that come to us … we look at revenues,” he said. “We take a holistic approach and we have to evaluate individual projects based on funds that are available. For us, the main trade-off is to accommodate evolving levels of service which depends on evolving levels of revenues."
ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg advocated for a technology neutral Connect America Fund, noting coming high-throughput satellite networks will offer 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream speeds at lower prices than terrestrial alternatives for about half of the underserved homes in the U.S. Possible latency requirements for the fund may be counterproductive and seem “arbitrary,” he said. Worries over how to deal with the technical requirements, such as jitter, of specific applications may not need to be considered for the fund, he said. “Speed is decisive, bandwidth is decisive,” he said: “When you elevate the importance of some of these second order parameters, you may find that we are actually diminishing the effectiveness of the network over time."
Wireless technology offers the significant selling point in its ability to upgrade as technology develops, said Paul Mankiewich, chief technical officer of Juniper Networks. An upgrade path must be of consideration because it’s impossible to predict what is next, he said. Symmetry of upstream and downstream speeds isn’t incredibly important in most cases, though more reliance on cloud computing may change that, said Mankiewich.
Video needs are the most significant factor driving demand, said Matt Larsen, owner of Vistabeam. His network saw serious congestion on Christmas day, largely due to the addition of Netflix enabled devices that were all switched on at the same time, he said. A required speed of 4 Mbps downstream isn’t a particular worry for most service providers, said Ken Ko, senior staff scientist at Adtran. The 1 Mbps upstream is a little harder, but “doable,” he said.