Tag: USF

Archaic Telecom

Group Conferencing Startups: Pay the USF Fees

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It’s a slow afternoon here, so I had a little time  to consider one mind-numbing regulatory aspect of the growing number of group messaging and conferencing startups.

Eventually when these companies (Fast Society, Group.me, et. al) start charging for their services—most of them don’t now—my understanding is that they will be required to file an FCC Form 499.

Ok, so it was a very slow day.

Remember Form 499? That’s where providers of telecommunications for pay—and that includes call conferencing services—tell the FCC about their VoIP revenues apportioned to interstate connections.

And then our regulators calculate how much money is owed to the Universal Service Fund kitty.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Google on USF Reform: Bill and Keep

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Maybe it’s the result of a second espresso I had this morning, but Google’s recent comment on the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rule Making on Universal Service Fund reform doesn’t read like a typical carrier screed.

It’s their engineering culture. They won me over a little when they said that “IP transmission, in itself, is not ‘magic pixie dust’ that somehow creates a regulation-free zone.”Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Universal Service Fund Follies: The XO Files

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I raise my cup of espresso to the FCC for starting the process to reform the Universal Service Fund with the ultimate goal  of modernizing a rusting regulatory structure that is not up to task of universal broadband service.

Reading the beginning of the FCC’s recent Proposed Rule Making on the USF, I was all to ready to discount the glib appraisals of the Service Fund as “inefficient” and “broken”.  Sure it’s not perfect, I thought, and of course there are loopy incentives encouraging some inefficient activities, but…

A dispute between XO Communications, “one of the nation’s largest communications service providers”, and the Fund’s administrator, the Universal Service Administration Corporation or USAC, unfortunately seems to validate some of the harsh criticisms hurled at the current USF regime.

It has all the makings of an on-the-edge-of-your-seat FCC caper: battling attorneys,  hyper-diligent auditors, endless bureaucratic procedures, ambiguous forms, battling attorneys, and battling attorneys.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

FCC to Launch New Rules on USF

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FCC Chairman Genachowski has set a vote tomorrow for a  Notice of Proposed Rule Making on Universal Service Fund and Intercarrier Compensation reform.

Some of the ideas Mr. G sketched out in a speech today, in which he called the ICC System “flawed” and “unstable” and the USF “plagued with inefficiencies”,  had already been outlined in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.

The most striking proposal in the speech, delivered at The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, was a plan to “phase down intercarrier payments.”

As I’ve written about before (see the “Shoot the Laywers” post), the ICC rewards local carriers, mostly rural, with high per minute payments for calls terminated on their switches.  These access fees are split with services that have set up intimate talk —read porn—conference bridges in what is referred to as “traffic pumping.”

Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

ITExpo Regulatory 2.0: Shoot All the Lawyers

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There was one part of ITExpo I was able to attend remotely.

The Regulatory 2.0 sub-conference at ITExpo is an under-appreciated gathering of lawyers, FCC observers, engineers, and legally-savvy telecom entrepreneurs, who all had definite viewpoints on net neutrality and other regulatory matters.

Thank you Rich Tehrani and TMC (the organizers of ITExpo) for live-streaming the panel discussions of this “co-located” event to the millions of policy wonks who care about section 706 authority. 😉

Not knowing what to expect, I tuned into the “If Engineers Wrote the Rules” chat. It was less than an hour, but I thought someone on this panel would suggest how the telecom rules should be organized in a more logical, Spock-like way.

Other than wanting to remove lawyers with great prejudice from the FCC, the only policy recommendation offered was less rules.

While I didn’t agree with many statements coming from the panel, which included Richard Shockey, co-author of the SIP RFC and now board chairman of the SIP Fourm, it was a stimulating discussion and I learned a few things.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

National Broadband Plan Has Goal to Study Harder

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That’s not an Onion headline. But after perusing a few key sections of the officially released National Broadband Plan I learned that the FCC recommendations involve either more study or vague posturings on important policy debates that have been raging since dawn of time: broadening the universal service fund (USF) to include VoIP carriers (see weakly worded Recommendation 8.10), wholesale access and pricing (see tepid Recommendation 4.7), openness of mobile devices (no recommendations that I can find), and the overall question of whether we have a competitive broadband market (for what it’s worth, Recommendation 4.2).