Carriers spar over FCC’s plans for USF

On April 27, the Federal Communications Commission held a workshop on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation (ICC) reform. The FCC’s goal is to expand broadband to unserved areas by asking private telecom companies to bid on particularly hard-to-reach areas of the country. But there is disagreement among wireless carriers about the best way to go about doing that.

While large companies like Verizon agree with the competitive bidding idea, smaller carriers say an auction would undermine other efforts to reach unserved areas. In addition to defining broadband as a universal service, the Consumer Federation of America's Mark Cooper says the FCC should also define 4G wireless as a universal service. “Mobility will help the adoption problem,” Cooper said. To expand broadband to hard-to-reach areas, he said the FCC should think about adopting a model similar to electricity co-ops. “We serve a huge swath of the country with nonprofits – and there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said. “The unserved broadband problem is nothing compared to the New Deal problem of getting electricity to people.” Cox Communications’ Jose Jimenez told the FCC to keep its expectations reasonable for building out to unserved areas. “We are not going to be able to get broadband to everyone at the same time. That is just not feasible,” he said during the USF reform workshop. “We are going to get there eventually. This is an iterative process. To think you’re going to do it at once is not reasonable.”