The FCC unanimously voted to completely overhaul the Universal Service Fund (“USF”) last Thursday, in a move that marks a historic change in policy for the Commission. Part of a telephone subsidy regime that stretches back to 1934, the USF was established in 1997 to help expand telephone service into rural areas. The funds from the program came from what amounted to a tax on telephone service, with the fund capped at $4.5 billion a year.
Telecommunications
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AT&T Challenges Justice Department's Complaint
On Friday, September 9, 2011, AT&T responded to the Justice Department’s antitrust complaint, filed on Wednesday, August 31, 2011. The company categorically denied the Justice Department’s concerns that the proposed merger with T-Mobile would stymie competition and suggested that the merger would actually promote an even more
Justice Department Drops Call on AT&T’s Proposed Merger
Just when AT&T thought it was clear for the $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA, the wires got crossed and the signal dropped. Last Wednesday, AT&T’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, said that he expected his company’s bid for T-Mobile to be approved by the government in early 2012. Within an hour of his statement, Stephen
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Article: The FCC’s Regulatory Mulligan: Exploring the Options in the Wake of a Failed D Block Auction
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 10, Issue 2, Page 313 (June 2009)
Abstract
In March 2008, the Federal Communications Commission auctioned licenses to sizeable tracts of radio frequency spectrum that will be vacated due to the analog-to-digital television conversion to occur in June 2009. The Commission conditioned the license to one portion of this spectrum—the “D Block”—on an unprecedented requirement: for the licensee to work hand-in-hand with public-safety agencies in a “public/private partnership” to deploy a nationwide public-safety communications network.
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