The draft Lifeline order currently circulating at the FCC “as it is currently described to me … will undermine state matching programs and certainly make them less effective, and lead to more fraud and abuse,” Brad Ramsay, general counsel of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said today during the Free State Foundation’s Telecom Policy Conference. The draft order, as circulated, would extend Lifeline support to standalone and bundled broadband services, create a streamlined federal process for providers not currently participating in the program to become certified, and establish a program budget of $2.25 billion, indexed to inflation (TRDaily, March 8).

The introduction of an optional national process for the FCC to certify providers as “Lifeline Broadband Providers”—as an alternative to the existing state-certification of eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs)—would “undermine state-matching programs” that provide additional state-funded Lifeline support, Mr. Ramsay said. 

He added that he was “very skeptical” that the optional national certification would draw new providers into the Lifeline program, which has been cited by FCC officials as the goal of that provision.  After all, he said, why would a provider want to offer Lifeline service in California, for example, with a national certification that would cede a $13 state-subsidy advantage to a provider that has been certified through the existing state ETC process.

Another panelist, Nicol Turner-Lee, president and chief research and policy officer of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), said that it is important to streamline the certification process for consumers.  “The people we’re trying to reach are already unbanked, … [and] are unable to travel in their wheelchairs to get re-upped” as Lifeline eligible, she said.

“NARUC does support some streamlining of the process,” Mr. Ramsay said. Asked about the oral argument at the Sixth Circuit last week regarding the FCC’s order preempting Tennessee and North Carolina laws restricting the expansion of municipal broadband networks (TRDaily, March 17), Mr. Ramsay said, “It was pretty clear that one judge understood; one judge didn’t say anything; and the third judge—I wasn’t sure where she was going.”  He added, “The problem with the FCC analysis is that it treats the state and the subdivision of the state as two separate organs.”

NARUC has intervened in support of Tennessee and North Carolina in their legal challenge to the FCC order. —Lynn Stanton, lynn.stanton@wolterskluwer.com

Courtesy TRDaily