The FCC seeks to identify additional regulations ripe for retrospective analysis, the agency said in its final plan for retrospective analysis of existing rules, released Friday. The commission seeks to review Section 11 of the Communications Act, the regulatory flexibility rules, broadcast ownership rules, paperwork reduction and forbearance request rules, it said. Other retrospective reviews are related to issues like USF, broadcast TV spectrum, the emergency alert system, digital encryption, outage reporting requirements, wireless E-911 location accuracy and 700 MHz interoperability. The FCC also seeks to identify rules that may have a disproportionate or undue impact on certain entities, including regulations involving foreign ownership, pole attachment and antenna structures. The agency would also consider whether a regulation has been subject to frequent requests for waivers or been identified as needing revision. Other factors the FCC may consider include the need to eliminate overlapping or duplicative regulations, the need to eliminate conflicts or inconsistencies with other rules and the need to simplify or clarify regulatory language. Commissioner Ajit Pai said that in light of the importance of the analysis, the 2012 biennial review should take the form of commission-level action rather than bureau-level recommendations. Section 11 of the Communications Act requires the commission to review every two years all regulations that apply to the operations or activities of service providers and determine whether those regulations are “no longer necessary in the public interest as the result of meaningful economic competition between providers of such service,” he said. Following the review, the agency is then required “to repeal or modify any regulation it determines to be no longer necessary in the public interest,” he said. “Releasing the Final Plan for Retrospective Reform is a result of the hard work of our staff, and affirms the agency’s extensive efforts to eliminate unnecessary regulations,” Chairman Julius Genachowski said. “The FCC continues to make strong progress toward our goal of being a model of excellence in government."

Correcting the rule for calculation of the baseline for the phase-down of competitive eligible telecom carrier support will “avoid discrimination and prevent the phase-out of CETC support from disadvantaging T-Mobile and its customers relative to other wireless carriers,” T-Mobile USA told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Tuesday, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm8i34). The USF-intercarrier compensation order intended a monthly baseline measure for phase-down to approximate what CETCs would currently receive, had the identical support rule been retained, but the rule for calculating the monthly baseline support amount is “fundamentally inconsistent” with the order on this issue and should be revised, T-Mobile said.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell wants President Barack Obama to make federal agencies give the government more cooperation as the administration, commission and lawmakers want to reallocate public and privately held frequencies for wireless broadband. “I've been disappointed, I think, in the executive branch” for not doing more to encourage government to find frequencies it can move off of in favor of commercial deployment, he said Thursday. He praised the NTIA’s March report pegging at $18 billion what it would cost the government to vacate the 1755-1850 MHz band in a process it said would take 10 years (CD March 28 p1), saying that agency may not have gotten all the cooperation it needed from others. McDowell also said that at initial impression he prefers that telcos contribute to the USF based on a metric related to the amount of phone numbers a company has, he said in a taped interview to be shown this weekend on C-SPAN.

Senate Commerce Committee members evaluated the FCC’s positions on wireless competition, the E-rate program, net neutrality, spectrum incentive auctions and broadband deployment, during the agency’s first oversight hearing in three years. The commissioners would not say whether they planned to start an investigation into allegations of News Corp. misconduct, but said they were monitoring the situation. Newly minted FCC commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel were largely silent at the Wednesday hearing, and primarily deferred to established agency talking points.

Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance President Genevieve Morelli urged the leadership of the Senate Commerce Committee to reform USF contributions in a “competitively neutral manner,” in a letter sent Tuesday. “Additionally, the base of contributors must be expanded to include all service providers that benefit from access to a robust evolving broadband infrastructure,” said the letter sent to Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

The CostQuest Associates broadband analysis tool, proposed as a method of modeling Phase II FCC USF Connect America Fund support for price cap carriers, doesn’t adequately capture Alaska costs, Alaska Communications Systems Group told the Wireline Bureau in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bm7y9m). ACS expressed concern with the model’s omission of undersea cable costs of transporting broadband traffic from Alaska to the nearest Internet access point; the non-fiber transmission cost of transporting voice and data traffic between the serving wire center and other aggregation points in the network; and the fuel, labor and transportation costs of operating and maintaining remote serving wire centers and microwave facilities. ACS also questioned whether the information provided thus far, and access to the model’s mechanisms, are sufficient for third-party analysis.

Some companies with the largest dependence on the USF are likely to see revenue decline as a result of the FCC’s USF Order, said a Standard & Poor’s report released Thursday. However, the order might not have an immediate impact on the credit profile of any of the rated companies, it said. In the long run, smaller companies might not be able to make the financial commitment to expand broadband, it said. As a result, some state regulatory commissions might opt to expand their state USF programs and/or reallocate existing funds to help smaller, capital-constrained companies, it said. The FCC’s order may also prompt the adoption of state USFs where none currently exists, it said. The adoption of the cost model needed for the development of long-term broadband support is likely to be delayed, it said. It noted the FCC acknowledged that the process of implementing the model could take a year or more. The agency said the model is expected to be adopted by the end of the year.

Several educators asked the FCC to refrain from using the E-rate program to fund its proposed Digital Literacy Pilot, in letters posted Thursday in WC docket 11-42. “I am concerned that operating the pilot through E-Rate will undermine the important and ongoing work of E-Rate, causing delays in the program’s application and appeal processes, creating auditing problems” and resulting in “problematic precedents for E-Rate’s eligible services,” three of the letters said. The letters, sent by representatives of school districts in Alaska, Ohio, Maryland and Indiana, expressed concern that funding digital literacy training would require reallocating support from basic telecom services, further straining a program that is already “over subscribed and under funded.” Representatives from the Education and Libraries Networks Coalition met with Wireline Bureau officials Thursday to encourage the commission to make digital literacy a priority, but to fund the pilot through other parts of the USF (http://xrl.us/bm6zz2). “The vastly oversubscribed E-Rate program could not afford to fund any other services no matter how meritorious,” its ex parte filing said, arguing the addition would set bad precedent of using E-rate dollars for services “not directly focused on the delivery to schools and libraries of basic conduit access to the Internet."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was prodded by Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., about the agency’s role on protecting consumer privacy, at a budget hearing Wednesday. Genachowski said the FTC has the “lead” on privacy issues and held his cards close on the FCC’s position on News Corp. allegations of journalists hacking U.K. cellphones.

Having five FCC members for the first time in about a year automatically gives the agency more legitimacy, and the new additions may push the commission to act on some long-pending issues, industry officials and the most recent member to step down predicted. USF contribution is an issue that will see commission action soon anyway, and adding Ajit Pai as the new Republican member and Jessica Rosenworcel as the new Democratic commissioner brings differing views that could be helpful (CD May 8 p1). Meredith Baker left the FCC late last spring, and Pai fills her term through 2016.