Currently, regulators are asking interested parties to complete a web-based survey to gather information for a searchable database of broadband deployment projects and efforts that communities across the nation are undertaking. The web site, according to the NARUC Bulletin, will assist in the development of local "best practices" so that communities can build on the lessons learned by others. The survey may be accessed at: www.nrri.ohio-state.edu/broadbandsurvey.php.

The FCC and State regulators say they expect many local communities and municipalities, private industry, educational institutions and others to share their stories on the website. The information gathered in the surveys will be at www.nrri.ohio-state.edu/broadbandquery.php.

The company’s goal, according to the Associated Press, will be a revenue-to-employee ratio of about $350,000 per person by the end of 2001. Before the merger, US West’s revenue-to-employee ratio was $225,000 per person, while Qwest’s

was $490,000. When the $85 billion merger was completed a month ago, US West had 65,000 employees while Qwest had 7,000.

Qwest serves customers in 14 states: Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota.

Steve Lysne was named chief financial officer. Mr. Lysne will oversee accounting, CABS, purchasing, billing and financial functions of the company.

John Reiser was named chief operating officer. He will supervise customer service, the retail store, human resources, public relations, building and grounds and general administrative functions.

Lynn Nelson will be the chief technical officer. Mr. Nelson will supervise the service center, technical services, network operations, network engineering and planning, information technology, product coordination and business sales.

The FCC announced the total number of subscribers to mobile telephony services in the United States jumped from 69.2 million to 86 million during 1999, for a 32 percent increase. It is estimated those wireless carriers generated over $40 billion in revenues at the same time as consumer prices declined due to increased competition, according to BMJ&D Telecom Update.

According to the FCC’s study, at the end of 1999, 88 percent of the nation’s population had access to three or more competing mobile phone carriers. Nearly 70 percent could choose from five or more carriers.

Commissioner Susan Ness questioned whether wireless service deployment in rural areas was falling behind non-rural areas and asked agency staff to examine whether current partitioning and disaggregation rules should be adjusted and whether geographic boundaries for future spectrum actions should be smaller. Rural telcos complain that large carriers have often been unwilling to enter partitioning deals with smaller carriers, which the FCC has promoted as a way to ensure service to rural areas.

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and others said the FCC’s report was out of date and that the agency underestimated the correct figures. A week before the FCC announced the 1999 subscriber total of 86 million, CTIA observed the passing of the 100 million milestone.

The wireless association said the wireless industry grows by 67,082 subscribers a day or one new subscriber every 1.3 seconds. The industry reached the 100 million mark 17 years after cellular service first became available in 1983, compared to an estimated 91 years before the wireline telephone industry reached 100 million homes.

The conference is part of a series of statewide Leadership North Dakota events sponsored by businesses and community organizations throughout the State since 1998. Leadership North Dakota is a partnership between the Governor’s Office, the North Dakota Rural Development Council and North Dakota Leadership System consortium. The goal is to help communities identify, train and involve new leaders to help North Dakota thrive in the 21st century.

The conference will feature a motivational speaker and concurrent educational workshops on nine leadership related topics. Items include involving youth, group dynamics, mentoring, marketing your community’s message, managing negativity and action-oriented strategic planning. A new networking luncheon has been added to facilitate informal group discussions where participants can share ideas and concerns.

The conference runs from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m., Thursday, September 21, at the Bismarck Civic Center Exhibition Hall. The cost is $10, and includes a box lunch.

The law firm said that "Despite the FCC’s assertions that the ruling is merely advisory, and is not intended to determine the results of any particular State proceeding, it is clear the Declaratory Ruling addresses the recent decision by the South Dakota Public Utility Commission denying ETC status to Western Wireless. The decision signals the FCC’s intention to preempt State actions that it finds are a barrier to competition and contrary to the Telecommunications Act of 1996."

The Association believes the North Dakota Public Service Commission’s decision on Western Wireless’ petition to become an ETC can be distinguished from the South Dakota decision, perhaps only temporarily, because the PSC said it would not be in the "public interest" for the cellular company to receive USF funds in rural areas of North Dakota.

The FCC makes clear that its opinion only affects a carrier’s "eligibility to receive Federal USF support, and will not entitle a new market entrant to "receive" support until it actually provides the supported services." Once granted ETC status, the FCC states that such a carrier must be allowed "the same reasonable opportunity" to provide service to requesting customers as the incumbent local exchange carrier. If a carrier fails to provide designated services that receive USF support after such a "reasonable opportunity," the State regulators may then revoke ETC status.

On a related matter, the Association will be hosting two meetings prior to the Regulatory Reform Review Commission action on September 13 for members of the North Dakota Association of Telephone Cooperatives to review existing State USF funds from around the nation and make recommendations to the State Legislature.

Members of the RRRC include: State Representatives Mick Grosz and Eliot Glassheim; Senators Vern Thompson and Rich Wardner; and, Public Service Commissioner Bruce Hagen.

ADSL will allow customers to access information at speeds of 2.5 to 15 times faster than the standard 56k dial-up computer modem. With the new technology, the service can be obtained through a customer’s standard telephone line if the location is within 15,000 feet of a telephone exchange’s central office and a consumer will be able to use the telephone line while being "on-line" with the computer.

Northwest anticipates being able to offer the service to the public in the next month.

Several differences remain, however, between the House and Senate version including a $7.5 million disparity for distance learning and telemedicine programs, which will be resolved in conference committee before being forwarded to President Clinton for his signature.

A company spokesman said Sioux Falls Towers offers free rental space on the towers to counties and other entities, such as the Park Service. "We have made an offer to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and as we go to the counties, we make it known to county sheriffs and emergency systems that they are welcome to place their equipment on our towers at no charge," the spokesman said.

Although the event was thinly attended, it did have one particularly influential guest: FCC Chairman William Kennard, who said, "If the internet can deliver a telephone conversation or a movie or a rock concert less expensively than through traditional means, than so be it. It’s good for competition."

According to the study, approximately 65 percent of rural telephone lines will be broadband-capable by 2002, but the difficulty of upgrading is significantly higher because of the large size of exchange areas, low line density and dispersed locations of telephone customers in rural America. NECA said the cost of upgrading lines in small towns is about $500 per line that are within 18,000 feet of a telephone exchanges’s central office and escalates to between $4,121 to $9,328 per line as those subs become more remote.

According to NTCA’s Washington Report, the companies NECA surveyed covers more than a third of the land area of the 48 contiguous States, plus Hawaii, but serve just under 6 percent of America’s households. The newsletter also notes that study calculations include plant upgrades on the customer side of switches, but do not include investment expenses on DSL equipment, switch and backbone transport to other service areas or the maintenance involved in upgrading the network to provide broadband services.

Long distance companies pay access charges to local telephone companies for the use of local lines and equipment needed to connect long distance calls.

Last year the Texas PUC ordered a decrease in long distance access charges to offset fees for the State Universal Service Fund, which supports telephone service in rural high-cost areas of Texas. After lawmakers gave the PUC authority to order long distance companies to pass along lower access fees to customers, local phone companies now use payments from the State Universal Service Fund in place of high access charges to keep local phone service affordable for all State residents.

In its argument before the Court, Verizon claimed that Federal law bars States from assessing a wireless carrier for universal service contributions--unless the wireless carrier provides a substitute for basic residential phone service in a substantial portion of the State.

Verizon cited Section 332 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, according to State and Local Communications Report, which says "no State or local government shall have any authority to regulate the entry of,

or the rates charged by, any commercial mobile radio service (CMRS) provider."

The Connecticut Supreme Court held that Section 332 allows the State to regulate "other terms and conditions" of CMRS provision, "without having to satisfy the substitutability condition." It ruled that a universal service contribution is one such term or condition, which doesn’t "constitute a prohibited rate regulation."

The Court also rejected Verizon’s claim that the assessment amounted to "double taxation" because the wireless company already contributed to the Federal Universal Service Fund.

Under the order, the existing presubscribed interstate carrier charge (PICC) on residential long distance bills will be eliminated by combining it with the subscriber line charge (SLC). In addition, the plan establishes a new universal service mechanism, making $650 million of implicit funding, explicit. The price cap carriers will establish a new line item on bills to recover universal service contributions.

The OPASTCO newsletter said the report answered the four questions the FCC set out in its notice:

Question 1: What is advanced telecommunications capability?

Answer: The FCC retained its current definition: infrastructure capable of delivering a speed of 200 kilobits (kbps) per second in each direction, while the Commission designates "high-speed" those services with more than 200 kbps capability in at least one direction.

Question 2: Is advanced telecommunications capability being deployed to all Americans?

Answer: The report found that 59 percent of the zip codes in this country have at least one subscriber to high-speed services and 91 percent of the country’s population live in those zip codes.

Question 3: Is overall deployment reasonable and timely?

Answer: The FCC said that those outside of population centers, including rural customers, are particularly vulnerable to not being served by market forces alone (there was at least one subscriber to high-speed service in 57 percent of the sample of small town zip codes, compared to 19 percent of the most sparsely populated zip codes).

Question 4: What actions will accelerate development?

Answer: The FCC said it will streamline the equipment approval process for wireless and customer premise equipment with advanced telecommunications capability. The Commission will also continue its commitment to the E- Rate and consider making more spectrum available for broadband services -- both licensed and unlicensed. In addition, the commission said it will initiated a proceeding on the issue of whether or not to establish a national policy to mandate access by multiple internet service providers to a cable company’s platform.

In rejecting the FCC’s rules on rural exemptions, the Court said the agency has set a virtually unachievable standard for rural companies to prove if they wanted to enjoy the protection that Congress gave rural companies in the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Congress said that rural incumbent local exchange carriers should not be required to provide interconnection or unbundled access to their network elements or resale of their facilities to a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) unless a State Public Service Commission finds the request is "not unduly economically burdensome, technically feasible and consistent with Section 254 of the Act."

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals completely rejected the Commission’s approach to handling rural exemptions and said:

1-The FCC eliminated two of the three prerequisites that must be satisfied before a State commission may terminate an exemption.

2-The FCC unreasonably interpreted the phrase "unduly economically burdensome."

3-The FCC impermissibly placed the burden of proof on rural telcos instead of on the competitor petitioning to throw out the rural telco’s exemption from interconnection or resale.

NTCA reported, "The 8th Circuit said that a State Commission looking at the FCC’s rules would conclude that if a rural telco had failed to show an undue economic burden, its rural exemption must be terminated, regardless of the existence of the rural company’s other defenses of technical

infeasibility and/or inconsistency with Section 254 of the Act.

The Court also said that the FCC’s interpretation of the "unduly economically burdensome" language of the law as "undue economic burden beyond the economic burden that is typically associated with efficient competitive entry" has a completely different meaning than the language Congress specifically wrote to protect small and rural telephone companies.

Finally, in rejecting the FCC’s placing the burden of proof on small, rural telcos, the Court said the plain meaning of the Federal Telecom Act requires that competitors, requesting interconnection, unbundled network elements or for resale from the incumbent local exchange carrier, has the burden to prove that the request meets the three requirements to justify the termination of a rural incumbent’s rural exemption.

The decision by Utah regulators seems to be identical to that of the North Dakota Public Service Commission, who said that making Western Wireless eligible for State and Federal Universal Service Fund support would not be in the "public interest." The Utah Commission went on to say that allowing a second ETC in the rural areas could reduce rural telcos’ revenues without reducing their costs, and that the difference would have to be offset by State Universal Service Funds.

"Near a Reservation" refers to areas or communities adjacent or contiguous to reservations, as designated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, where extension of financial assistance and social services are considered appropriate.

Local exchange companies offering Lifeline and Link Up programs on or near reservations must submit letters and certifications to the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) by September 1, to receive reimbursements for services provided in the fourth quarter of 2000.

By October 1, 2000, ETC’s must implement the tariff and billing system changes necessary to offer enhanced Lifeline and Link Up support to qualifying individuals.

The States’ attorneys general said the companies’ ads cite low per-minute rates that don’t take into account monthly fees, minimum charges, higher rates for intrastate calls and peak calling periods.