Wireless carrier NTCH said the FCC should consolidate the phase I and phase II Mobility Funds into a single support process. The suggestion came in comments filed at the FCC in reaction to a further rulemaking notice on the Universal Service Fund (http://xrl.us/bmo6cc). The carrier previously raised the issue in a petition for reconsideration of the USF reform order. “It is unclear why the Commission opted to split the funding for mobility operations and support into two distinct phases,” NTCH said. “Looked at holistically, any service provider assessing the viability of constructing a telecommunications system in an underserved area and providing service there for the long term would need to know both how much USF support is available at the outset and how much will be available for operating expenses.”

The FCC should “take all necessary regulatory and policy measures” to “bring parity of broadband technology and service to Native communities,” the National Tribal Telecommunications Association (NTTA) said in comments responding to a rulemaking notice on Universal Service Fund high-cost loop support. NTTA said tribal communities “have high unemployment, high poverty, and large numbers of low income customers.” Among its members, 86 percent of the Gila River Tribe’s subscribers are Low Income Program customers, as are 72 percent of Hopi subscribers and 60 percent of San Carlos Apache’s subscribers, the group said (http://xrl.us/bmo5xq). NTTA understands the growing pressures on the USF, but native areas present problems the FCC must address, the filing said. “Native peoples reside in the worst connected communities in America for both broadband and for basic voice dial tone,” it said. “The Commission needs to honor both its Communications Act and its trust responsibility to provide parity of technology and service to Native communities."

CenturyLink tried to distance itself from services offered by MeetingOne. MeetingOne has asked the FCC to review a Wireline Bureau order that found MeetingOne’s audio bridging is a telecommunications service that ought to be subject to Universal Service Fund reporting and contribution rules. “CenturyLink takes no position here as to whether the Bureau’s conclusions regarding MeetingOne’s service are correct,” the company said. But CenturyLink takes issue with MeetingOne’s claim that MeetingOne’s offering is less similar to a telecom service than that offered by Qwest’s IPTF and IPLD services, which support MeetingOne’s audio bridges, CenturyLink said in comments published at docket 06-122 (http://xrl.us/bmon8c). MeetingOne made its claims “without any legal analysis or supporting authority” and its statements are not only “incorrect” but also “irrelevant,” CenturyLink said. “The Commission therefore is precluded from going beyond the Bureau’s findings to consider contribution obligations pertaining to Qwest’s services,” CenturyLink said. The FCC could help things out if it weighed contribution questions “for complex IP technologies ... prospectively” and in broader, rulemaking proceedings rather than in a “piecemeal manner,” CenturyLink added. “Given the checkerboard of determinations regarding the regulatory treatment of IP-enabled services, the USF contribution obligations of new and complex IP-based services seldom are clear,” CenturyLink said. CenturyLink owns the former Qwest operation.

Rural telcos have asked the White House to help save them from newly passed Universal Service Fund reforms. NARUC, meanwhile, decided to join the court challenge against October’s FCC USF reforms (CD Oct 28 p1), a state official told us.

Native Americans became the first parties to oppose petitions to reconsider last fall’s universal service reforms, the record on docket 10-90 showed. The National Congress of American Indians and Navajo telecom regulators filed separate, but similarly worded, briefs to oppose RLEC’s request for exemption of some of the new rules’ guidelines for deploying broadband in tribal areas (CD Oct 28 p1).

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski should overhaul the Universal Service Fund’s Lifeline program “only if such reform translates as eliminating the USF altogether,” said Heartland Institute scholar Bruce Edward Walker Tuesday. The draft Lifeline reform order, expected to have circulated late Tuesday, has been met with some ambivalence (CD Jan 10 p1). Late Tuesday, the commission said a Lifeline and Link Up reform order and rulemaking notice is tentatively scheduled for a vote at the Jan. 31 meeting. Walker meanwhile said universal service has reached “97 percent of the population, a fact reported in the Federal Communications Commission’s own research that seems to elude the chairman.” Customers are already paying too much in USF fees, Walker said. “Government fees account for 15 percent of customers’ regular service charges on average, which is more than double the sales tax levied in most states. Additionally, 59 cents of each USF dollar collected from users’ bills isn’t appropriated to build out and connections but to cover the administrative costs of perpetuating a completely unnecessary bureaucracy."

Civil rights and “digital divide” erasure advocates gave mixed reviews to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s Lifeline reform proposals Monday. As expected (CD Jan 9 p7), Genachowski promised what he called “cost controls” and “a budget” for Lifeline and Link-Up, with most of his efforts focused on rooting out some 200,000 duplicate claims and building a database to prevent future “waste.” The draft order will circulate Tuesday, Genachowski said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski plans to circulate an order on the Lifeline program as early as Tuesday, telecom and commission officials told us. As Genachowski did with the high-cost portion of the Universal Service Fund last fall (CD Oct 28 p1), the coming order is expected to put Lifeline on what the chairman will call “a budget.” It will not formally cap the Lifeline portion of USF, telecom and FCC officials said. It’s expected to address eligibility requirements and how to remove people from the Lifeline rolls if they're not eligible, telecom officials said.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell expects Universal Service Fund reform to dominate the FCC’s agenda in the early part of 2012, starting with a Lifeline cleanup order at the Jan. 31 meeting. McDowell hopes that will be followed by an order addressing USF contribution issues left unsettled by last October’s order (CD Oct 28 p1), he said during an interview last week. McDowell said he remains open minded on a 700 MHz interoperability order and stressed the importance of spectrum efficiency. McDowell also thinks more media ownership deregulation than the FCC proposed in the quadrennial review may be needed.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Thursday named senior advisor Zac Katz as his new chief of staff, to serve for what is expected to be the final year or so of his chairmanship. Katz, Genachowski’s aide on wireline issues, had been a key player in the commission’s approval last year of a Universal Service Fund/intercarrier compensation order. Katz was also a top Genachowski aide behind the FCC’s approval in December 2010 of its controversial net neutrality rules, having spent a year working on that issue when he first got to the agency.