The FCC Thursday unanimously approved three items aimed at improving communications and radio service on tribal lands. Commissioners also heard testimony from tribal leaders about the state of communications in Indian country. The meeting came as the White House held a follow up meeting on last year’s Tribal Nations Summit.

The North Carolina Utilities Commission should rule it has authority to require wireless carriers and VoIP providers to contribute to a proposed Universal Service Fund, AT&T North Carolina, the RLEC Coalition and the North Carolina Telephone Membership Corporations said. The commission has the authority to mandate such contributions and that “any fund that exempts these technologies will create a mechanism that is not technologically and competitively neutral and will impose a disproportionate burden on certain consumers, which is greater than necessary,” they said in a joint filing. The decision regarding whether certain parties can be legally required to participate in a USF that’s related to a comprehensive intrastate access revamp isn’t ripe for a decision and “must not be addressed at this time,” said the North Carolina Cable Telecom Association (NCCTA). Should the commission decide that the matter is “ripe,” NCCTA asked the commission to issue an order concluding that the agency doesn’t have the legal authority to establish a “revenue recovery” fund as commended by the Movants, the group said. Verizon agreed, saying “not only is this issue not ripe for review, but the requested ruling would violate North Carolina law, which exempts these categories of services from Commission regulation.” Even if the issue were ripe for decision, the commission doesn’t have the authority to require wireless carriers, VoIP providers and interexchange carriers to pay into a universal service fund, Verizon said. The state’s General Assembly has exempted wireless, VoIP and interexchange services from commission jurisdiction, the telco said. The commission initiated the proceeding in 2009 when Sprint Nextel petitioned to reduce intrastate access rates of ILECs, requesting that the commission reduce ILECs’ access rates to cost, or alternatively, to parity with the ILECs’ corresponding interstate access rates. Commission staff said in a filing that the issue of whether the commission has the authority to compel wireless carriers, interconnected VoIP providers, and IXCs to contribute to a state USF is ripe for adjudication. A decision by the commission on the issue would determine the parties to any further proceeding and frame and narrow the issues, the staff said.

Converting the Universal Service Fund to broadband could cause the fund to balloon unless policymakers first reexamine “the purpose, design, and management” of the subsidy program, the GAO said in a report. The report dated Tuesday deals with opportunities to reduce duplication in government, save tax dollars and increase revenue. GAO recommended that Congress give USF increased attention since it falls outside of the annual appropriations process. In a speech Wednesday, Aspen Institute’s Blair Levin said “waste, fraud and abuse” are buzz words that don’t grasp the USF’s real problems.

Rural carriers are gearing up to fight against the proposed cap on the Universal Service Fund and other objections they've found to the FCC’s rulemaking notice, association lobbyists said Tuesday. The cap, which would freeze the fund at 2010 levels, “has to be proven flawed,” Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecom Companies Vice President Randy Tyree said on a conference call for members of several rural associations. It’s important that rural telcos and their supporters convince policy makers and legislators that the telcos are handling their USF cash well and that broadband will expand even further if the fund is allowed to expand, too, he said.

Feb. 26-March 1 National Religious Broadcasters convention, with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, Nashville -- www.nrbconvention.org

The FCC must not forget rural areas as it seeks to revamp the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation, former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said in an interview Friday. Dorgan, who recently joined the Arent Fox law firm as senior policy adviser, said Congress has worked a long time on USF but “doesn’t seem to be getting it done.” The Senate had worked on the issue, but has shown less interest “the last couple of years,” he said. “The question is, what will the FCC do as it rethinks” USF and intercarrier compensation, “and will it pay as much attention as is necessary to avoid having a digital divide in the future with regard to advanced services?” Dorgan is “tinkering around with an op-ed piece” about USF overhaul discussing the “dramatic changes that have occurred since I've been in Congress and still the urgent need not only for universal service but intercarrier compensation funding” for small telcos in rural areas, he said. “I come from a town of 300 people, and so I've always been concerned that whatever happens … there needs to be an understanding of the buildout of advanced services and the financial capability to do that in the rural areas.” Most high-speed broadband buildout goes to “the biggest cities where there’s the largest income streams,” Dorgan said. But the original idea behind universal service was that a telephone in a rural area is just as important as one in an urban location, he said. “That concept has to continue through the development of these advanced services. Otherwise you will leave a lot of parts of the country behind economically.”

The FCC appears to be leaning toward Title II-style regulation of broadband through its Universal Service Fund revamp, industry officials told us after examining the commission’s rulemaking notice on USF. “It’s clear to me that when you look at the questions they're asking around support, that seems where they're heading,” Voice of the Net Coalition Executive Director Glenn Richards said. “It’s a way to get broadband providers to agree to Title II-like obligations.” FCC officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Investment in wireless broadband is expected to result in creation and/or retention of 117,000 jobs in the 19 states that have the lowest broadband availability and penetration in the U.S., based on the premise of extending roaming obligations to data services and requiring interoperability among all carriers operating in the 700 MHz spectrum band, said a study by Raul Katz, a professor with Columbia Business School. But interoperability and data roaming challenges are barriers to investing broadband in rural areas, he said during a briefing Thursday. Another barrier is that a large portion of the public funds dedicated to broadband deployment are being assigned to fiber infrastructure, he said. The opportunity cost of not allowing smaller, rural and regional carriers to roam onto the national carriers’ networks or interoperate in the 700 MHz band is significant, he said. The Rural Cellular Association is this week briefing the FCC and members of the Congress about the study which RCA funded. Everyone talks about jobs and potential creation of 117,000 should be a real wake-up call for policymakers, said RCA President Steve Berry. Immediate action is needed to make data roaming and interoperability possible throughout the 700 MHz spectrum, he said. It’s critical that interoperability across devices designed to work in any one block of paired 700 MHz spectrum be enforced, the study said. And without automatic data roaming (similar to what exists in voice services), rural carriers will potentially face onerous terms when roaming onto national carriers. Regarding speeds, studies showed there’s a dramatic impact on productivity when going from dial-up speeds to around 5 Mbps, Katz said. Berry said in an interview after the briefing that state regulators can utilize their unique knowledge of local situations and help inform federal regulators and make broadband funding more targeted and flexible. A good USF system should be success-based and revenue and technology neutral, he said.

The FCC made the right decision by putting off a fight over contribution reform to focus on reforming the high-cost Universal Service Fund distribution system, said National Broadband Plan architect Blair Levin. There are “too many moving parts” in the debate over contribution factor, so the commission focused on “low-hanging fruit” in its recent rulemaking notice, Levin said on a panel Wednesday sponsored by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee. He was having an exchange with fellow panelist National Telecommunications Cooperative Association CEO Shirley Bloomfield. She said she “would have liked to see the FCC wrestle with contribution.” NTCA members are seeing up to 10 percent of their bandwidth gobbled by companies like Netflix and the situation is critical, she said.

The FCC should fix the “disparity” between what states pay into the Universal Service Fund and what they get out of it, Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Bill Nelson of Florida and John Kerry of Massachusetts wrote Chairman Julius Genachowski. “We appreciate the commission’s focus on constraining growth in the size of USF.” But the “disparity between USF support and contributions for our states is significant,” they wrote Thursday. New Jersey customers paid $4.68 into the fund for every dollar they got back; Massachusetts customers paid $3.66 for every dollar they got back and Florida customers paid $2.23 for every dollar, the senators said. “Although we support the concept of universal service and recognize the importance of universal access to broadband for all Americans, the USF desperately needs to be changed to address the numerous inequities and inefficiencies in its current administration,” the senators wrote.