Members of Congress are reacting angrily to suggestions from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt that his agency will not be ready to issue new orders on how to provide universal phone service for rural areas and the poor by a deadline next month.
"If we delay the process then the phone companies and the states will begin making their own rules that may not comply with rules laid out in the telecom act," Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana) said in a phone interview Tuesday.
The FCC is scheduled to issue orders on universal service - guaranteeing basic communications services to all Americans through a complex series of charges and subsidies - on 8 May under provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Other telecom-related issues the commission is scheduled to act on by the same date include provisions for wiring the nation's schools, setting up a national framework for telemedicine, and deciding whether phone companies will get to charge special access charges to Internet service providers. Hundt says the FCC is on track to issue all the needed orders on these issues by the deadline.
But he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Tuesday that the commission does not have enough information to set the new rules for universal service by 8 May. Hundt was traveling Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. An FCC spokesperson said that the official deadline for universal service had not changed, and that no statement on pushing back that deadline had been issued.
"The majority of the Senate Commerce Committee is very, very disturbed by this most recent proposal," a committee staffer said.
Last month, lawmakers from rural states sent a letter to Hundt condemning an FCC Joint Board's recommendations on universal service, saying that the proposed guidelines would not adequately serve rural consumers.
Burns said legislators plan to discuss the issue with Hundt upon his return to Washington. Related Wired Link:
Rural Legislators Fight for Low Phone Rates
by Rebecca Vesely
