By David Hatch
(Tuesday, June 12) Senate lawmakers from both parties sharply criticized the FCC for changes that it wants to make to the universal service fund and urged the agency to take the lead on a comprehensive overhaul. The rancor revealed dissension over how to update the fund, which subsidizes telecommunications offerings in rural and low-income regions nationwide.
"Someone is putting their head in the ground. This is an ostrich approach as far as I'm concerned," Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, complained during a hearing. He presided in lieu of Commerce Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii.
Stevens was one of several lawmakers to blast a May 1 recommendation by the FCC's Joint Federal-State Board on Universal Service to temporarily cap USF subsidies flowing to competitive telecom carriers, mostly wireless firms. "We have not mandated that you follow it," the senator said of the recommendation.
"I would hope the FCC would reconsider this decision because of the enormity of the impact it's going to have," warned Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. She said the safety of rural Americans could be jeopardized if planned cellular towers are scrapped.
Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., supports limiting the fund's overall size but criticized the proposed threshold as an "arbitrary" step that could skew the marketplace and impede Congress' ability to adopt changes.
Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., raised various concerns about the fund and urged the FCC to make sweeping changes.
For months, the FCC and Congress have been moving on what appeared to be parallel tracks, but on Tuesday, Stevens urged the FCC to take the lead. Stevens noted that a forthcoming Senate bill by him and Inouye would draw on legislation that Stevens introduced earlier, as well as from a measure offered by Dorgan and Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.
Republican FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, who heads the joint board, spent much of the hearing defending the interim cap while agreeing with lawmakers that the FCC must do more to build consensus and revamp the fund. Tate emphasized that the board acted because competitive carriers represent the fund's largest growth area.
"People are frustrated. The fund is growing at an unsustainable rate. We will move forward," she said, conceding that the program is "fraught with many inequities."
But Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., warned that temporary fixes imposed by the FCC sometimes become permanent. He cited examples to bolster his claim.
Stevens also faulted the FCC for rules that permit competitive carriers to receive USF subsidies based on the higher costs of dominant phone firms. The senator made universal service a top priority of his telecom legislation last year, but so far this year, no major effort has emerged to update the nation's telecom laws.
"In the end, we cannot let short-term proposals free us from the need to address long-term reform," Inouye wrote in a statement.
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