The West Virginia Public Service Commission (WVPSC) supports USF waiver requests by four small rural telecom providers operating in the state, it told the FCC in comments posted Tuesday (http://bit.ly/YLClPn). Armstrong, Hardy Telecommunications and Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telephone had sought a waiver from the method the FCC uses to calculate the rate floor for USF support recipients. The companies asked that the end-user rate benchmark be applied to a weighted average of all their local service plan rates, rather than separately to each rate on a plan-by-plan basis. “Without using a weighted average,” the companies “must increase rates paid by consumers” of certain local service tiers “to avoid losing a portion of their USF support,” the WVPSC said. Elderly and low-income customers will be disproportionately affected if that happens, it said. NTCA and Frontier also supported the request (CD March 4 p7).

Border to Border Communications needs to provide more information for the FCC Wireline Bureau to decide whether to grant its requested waiver of some of the high-cost USF rules, Bureau Chief Julie Veach said in a letter to the company Monday (http://bit.ly/YLBoXp). Border had asked for a waiver of the $250 monthly line cap and the limit on reimbursable capital and operating expenses for high-cost loop support. The bureau asked for the names and salaries of workers at an engineering company Border contracts with; a description or “illustrative network diagram” of Border’s wireline and 700 MHz radio networks; and additional information about its financials. The bureau also asked Border to describe the applicability of the new Texas statute requiring the state public utility commission to “implement a mechanism to replace the reasonably projected change in revenue” caused by FCC rules.

The FCC must ensure that any future Connect America Fund Phase I support be used to meet the “original intent” of the funding mechanism, which was to bring broadband to unserved areas, NCTA told several FCC Wireline Bureau officials Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/ZRt6UN). The commission shouldn’t change the Phase I focus to let ILECs upgrade existing DSL service, or overbuild unsubsidized providers by awarding funding for second-mile fiber, NCTA said. NCTA urged the commission to enforce the requirement that ILECs use one-third of their frozen high-cost support to areas that are substantially unserved by an unsubsidized competitor. The FCC should reject ILEC requests to “repurpose” such support if they don’t have any such unserved areas, NCTA said. “This legacy money does not belong to the incumbent LECs to use where they see fit.” NCTA asked for the commission to provide information about the disbursement of USF high-cost funds “in a more transparent and open manner by making such information readily and easily accessible” on the FCC website.

Adak Eagle Enterprises and Windy City Cellular laid out for FCC staff how they're cutting costs in their attempts to serve remote Adak Island, Alaska, following the FCC’s grant of a waiver to the companies temporarily giving them extra support to serve the remote area (http://bit.ly/WlFw6a). The order was from the Wireless and Wireline bureaus as they evaluate the two carriers’ need for extra funding. “AEE and WCC have been struggling to maintain operations since their universal service funding was drastically (and immediately, without notice) reduced under the USF ... Transformation Order, including a staggering 84 percent flash-cut to WCC’s funding and the subsequent rapid phase-down of funding for AEE,” the carriers said (http://bit.ly/XLbKD0). “AEE and WCC appreciate the interim relief provided by the Bureaus as they are evaluating a long-term resolution of their waiver requests. AEE and WCC have been actively pursuing cost-cutting measures in order to minimize the amount of universal service support necessary for the companies to continue providing quality service to their customers in a safe manner.” Much of the data submitted was redacted from the public version posted by the FCC.

The USF/intercarrier compensation order remained intact after the sixth order on reconsideration, released Wednesday. In response to several petitions for reconsideration, the FCC declined to reconsider adoption of its high-cost universal service support rules for rate-of-return carriers, and declined requests to reconsider the monthly per-line cap of $250. The original order “represents a careful balancing of policy goals, equities, and budgetary constraints,” the commission said. The latest iteration did make what Chairman Julius Genachowski called “some modest adjustments” to simplify spending caps and give the Wireline Bureau more flexibility to “maintain certainty regarding year-to-year funding levels.” Commissioner Ajit Pai wrote separately to criticize unpredictable benchmarks he thinks will undermine efficient and prudent decisionmaking by rate-of-return carriers.

When a customer chooses not to take plain old telephone service on a broadband-capable loop -- instead desiring to take only broadband -- the costs of that loop get reassigned to a category that doesn’t qualify for USF support, officials from NTCA, NECA and the Western Telecommunications Alliance told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Thursday (http://bit.ly/ZxVyuA). “In practical terms, this means that a consumer’s rates for broadband in high-cost areas will increase simply because that consumer might decide that he or she only wants broadband and no longer wants to purchase POTS on that line,” they said. “This result -- denying the availability of USF support and increasing broadband rates based solely upon a rural customer’s choice to purchase only broadband -- significantly undermines consumer freedom of choice, deters broadband adoption, and inhibits technological evolution.” The groups asked the commission to structure a standalone broadband funding mechanism to “fulfill the express and plainly stated intent” of its 2011 reform order.

Human judgment is necessary in executing the FCC’s quantile regression analysis, since it “is currently and likely always will be inaccurate to such an extent,” said a white paper from Alexicon Consulting and Balhoff & Williams, filed with the FCC Thursday (http://bit.ly/Zv4j8K). The analysis determines telcos’ high-cost support and was implemented as part of the FCC’s November 2011 USF order. The report’s two authors are listed as Alexicon Principal Vincent Wiemer and Michael Balhoff, an attorney with Balhoff & Williams.

The FCC needs to find a near-term solution to make USF support available to rural LECs for broadband-capable networks even where a consumer chooses not to take voice service, NTCA told an FCC Wireline Bureau official Friday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/Yn7A33). Rules denying USF support for broadband-capable networks in high-cost areas based solely upon a rural customer’s choice to purchase only broadband “significantly undermine consumer freedom of choice and inhibit technological evolution,” NTCA said. The commission should “complete the transition it has already adopted on the face of the November 2011 order -- and thereby facilitate technological evolution -- through simple and straightforward technical fixes to existing rules that would implement this vision for consumers in areas served by RLECs,” NTCA said.

Commenters generally supported a process proposed by the FCC Wireline Bureau to let parties challenge census blocks misidentified by the National Broadband Map (NBM). The process would let parties challenge census blocks identified as eligible to receive Connect America Fund Phase II support, when the parties argue they're actually unserved by an unsubsidized competitor. Cable and wireless ISPs offered some tweaks to the process. USTelecom and several rural associations offered alternative proposals that would involve recommendations by state authorities.

State legislators in Kansas are considering a bill on Internet Protocol-enabled services that’s at odds with a January ruling of the Kansas Corporation Commission. The state regulators asserted authority over fixed interconnected VoIP, while sponsors of Kansas’s House Bill 2326 propose, like more than two dozen other states, that state utility commissions should have very limited authority over IP-enabled technology. The Kansas bill attracted initial supporters from the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Voice on the Net Coalition. Other state bills limiting IP regulation are moving forward in Wyoming (CD Feb 1 p7), Arizona and other states.