Rural Telco Groups Call on USDA’s Vilsack to Intervene in USF Reform

The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and the Western Telecommunications Alliance have joined forces once again, jointly sending a letter last week to Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack asking him to escalate rural telco concerns about certain elements of the Connect America Fund order adopted by the Federal Communications Commission late last year.

In addition the groups asked Vilsack to help prevent the FCC from undertaking several additional reform measures. “Through a combination of changes to existing USF and ICC programs, the FCC effectively reduced funding available to RLECs, implementing retroactively applicable limitations that ‘pull the rug’ from beneath RLECs that invested on the basis of then-existing federally administered programs, and imposed new requirements on rural carriers,” the letter says. The letter also notes that “we are already hearing from members whose business plans for 2012 consist primarily of cutting back on operations and/or reducing staff to accommodate the constraints already ordered by the FCC.” It also notes that “few, if any, RLECs plan significant investment in 2012 as uncertainty gathers and lingers.” This “regulatory overhang” is undermining job creation and “the sustainable quality of broadband services in wide swaths of rural America,” the letter argues.