In a separate press release, The Aspen Institute announced that Kennard will become Senior Fellow of the institute’s Communications and Society Program.

The Communications and Society Program, one of 15 programs at the Institute, convenes non-partisan roundtable forums for leaders and experts in government, media and business to address policy challenges facing society around the world.

The MAG proposal seeks to reform interstate access and universal service support for incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs) subject to rate-of-return regulation. The proposal would be implemented over a five-year period beginning July 1, 2001.

The MAG plan is, according to NECA, partially modeled on the CALLS plan adopted for price cap carriers.

The MAG plan would increase the recovery of common line costs through flat, non-traffic sensitive charges. The plan also proposed to eliminate the current funding caps on high- cost loop support for rural carriers. Supporters of the MAG proposal believe that the plan would have many benefits, including a more efficient access rate structure, more explicit universal service support, and promote introduction of new technologies.

MAG members include National Rural Telecom Association, National Telephone Cooperative Association, OPASTCO and United States Telecom Association.

The legislation introduced in Nebraska (LB 839) would require wireless carriers to contribute to the State fund and would direct the State Public Utility Commission (PUC) to adopt rules allowing wireless carriers to receive high-cost State support. The bill introduced in Wyoming (HB) would require the Public Service Commission to develop a plan to disburse State universal service support payments to providers of flat-rated wireless local loop service.

The report found that subscribership for households with annual incomes below $5,000 was 79.2 percent, while the rate for households with incomes between $60,000 and $75,000 was 98.6 percent. The State of Mississippi had the lowest penetration rate, at 87.7 percent and Maine had the highest at 97.9 percent.

In part, the Rural Task Force recommendations forwarded to the FCC include:

A modified embedded cost mechanism for determining the size of the Federal universal service fund for rural carriers. The RTF chose this mechanism rather than a proxy model based upon forward-looking economic costs, which the FCC currently uses to distribute universal service funds to non- rural carriers.

Flexible disaggregation zones to determine portability of per line support.

A policy of "no barriers to advanced services" to ensure sufficient funds to build out broadband services in rural areas.

An increase in current caps limiting high-cost loop support for rural carriers, as well as a "safety valve" mechanism to provide additional funding for high-cost areas and for non- rural exchanges acquired by rural carriers.

A five year term for the proposed mechanism and a suggestion that the FCC develop a more permanent solution.

The continuation of Long Term Support and Local Switching Support.

Rural Task Force members represent rural telephone companies, CLEC’s, IXC’s, wireless providers, consumer advocates and State and Federal government agencies.

Western Wireless says, as they do in North Dakota, that the services they offer fall under a Federal prohibition against State regulation of the rates and market entry of commercial mobile radio services (CMRS). In short, the cellular company says States cannot regulate cellular operations in any way. The cellular company relies, and has been quite successful, in citing Section 332(c) of the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The Kansas telephone companies argue in their FCC petition that Western Wireless’ "basic universal service" is a "fixed" service rather than a "mobile" service and therefore should not qualify for the prohibition against State regulation. The incumbents say that Western Wireless’ equipment within a customer’s home is not "mobile" within the meaning of the Federal law’s prohibition of State regulation over a wireless carriers’s rates and market entry. Therefore, according to the incumbents, the FCC should declare that the local service being offered by Western Wireless is not "commercial mobile radio service."

In granting the company ETC status in Iowa’s rural areas, the Board said that the standard was met. The criteria for granting ETC status is does the wireless carrier:

1-Provide voice grade access to the public switched telephone network;

2-Provide unlimited local exchange service minutes free of charge;

3-Provide touchtone service;

4-Provide single-party service or its functional equivalent;

5-Provide access to operator services;

6-Provide access to emergency services;

7-Provide access to operator services;

8-Provide access to interexchange (long distance) services;

9-Provide access to directory assistance; and

10-Provide toll-limitation for qualifying low-income customers.

Western Wireless told the agency that it would meet its universal service obligations by utilizing wireless local loop technology, which uses a wireless access unit at a customer’s home to send signals to a nearby cellular telephone tower.

Although Qwest and the Iowa Telecommunications Association expressed concern that the petition from Western Wireless did not specify rates, terms and conditions or that they did not define their service territory and that there was no assurance they would serve as the carrier of last resort, the Iowa Utilities Board rejected all of their objections. The agency said Western Wireless was exempted by Federal law from the traditional requirements of a certificate of public convenience and necessity.

The share of households with computers rose from 42.1 percent in December, 1998 to 51 percent in August of 2000. It is estimated that 53.7 million households now have computers. The number of homes with Internet access also soared, reaching 41.5 percent, up from just 26.2 percent in the previous 1999 survey.

Less than a third of the 12.7 million CLECs lines were provided by facilities-based carriers. About 5.7 million were resold incumbent services and another 4.6 million were unbundled local loops.

The 84 grants will include $11.3 million for 49 distance learning projects encompassing over 300 educational facilities, which will enable students in rural school districts to participate in classes taught by instructors at distant locations, or to access information from libraries and other learning centers located far from their schools. Over $7 million will fund 35 telemedicine projects, involving nearly 200 medical institutions that will use new telecommunica- tions technology to help patients in isolated rural health clinics be examined, diagnosed and treated by doctors working in other medical centers.

The study found that U.S. cable television operators provided high-speed Internet service to 2.97 million customers as of September 30, an increase of 117 percent over the year-end 1999 figures. Digital subscriber line (DSL) services grew more rapidly, from 295,710 lines at the end of 1999 to 1.1 million on September 30, 2000.

Neel joined USTA in January 1994 after serving President Clinton as his White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Vice President Gore’s Chief of Staff. Neel said that although he is still working out his future, his plans involve helping Democrats run for the Senate and perhaps White House.

Veteran Telecommunications lobbyist Gary Lytle, who took on the USTA presidency on an interim basis during Neel’s leave of absence will, according to the USTA press release, continue for the foreseeable future.

The recess appointment allows Ness to stay at the agency until the 107th Congress recesses or until the Senate confirms a new presidential appointee.

The 24 transactions is up 41 percent from the 17 sales of lines in 1999 and double the 12 deals in 1998. However, the number of lines that were sold was more than double that of 745,000 in 1999 and six times as many as the 282,000 lines that changed hands in 1998.

The largest transaction to close during the year was Verizon’s purchase of former GTE properties in Minnesota, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Illinois. Also closing during the year was Citizen’s $61 million purchase of Qwest lines in North Dakota and South Dakota.

Among the violations were two attempts of forging customer authorizations. The FCC fined AT&T $40,000 for each slamming violations and $80,000 for each of the forging charges.

Digital subscriber line (DSL) is the most common form of broadband offering, with 69 percent of the companies surveyed indicating they would provide DSL by the end of 2001. The Blooston, Mordkofsky, Jackson & Dickens law firm said that figure compared favorably with a recent study done by the National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA), which found that 65 percent of all rural access lines would be capable of supporting DSL transmission.

Both studies noted that it will be extremely difficult to build- out DSL service to all rural telephone company subscribers, especially those more than 30,000 feet from the telephone company’s central office. NTCA advocates removing the current FCC caps on universal service high cost support funds to ensure these facilities are built out to all customers.

Northwest Communications believes the grants are essential if there is to be a adequate workforce for the technical jobs available. Ken Lund, NCC manager, said, "In anticipation of the statewide high-speed network that will interconnect all schools and government offices, we want to do our part to help eliminate the perceived digital divide. Hopefully this will help each school’s technology department provide the training needed by today’s students."

The schools, known as the Greater Southeast ITV Consortium, are Fairmount, Hankinson, Lidgerwood, Richland County Area Vocational-Technical Center, Richland Public Schools, Wyndmere, Verona, Oakes, Sargent, Sargent Central, Milnor, Southeast Area Vocational- Technical Center in Oakes and North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton.

Jan. 18:
  NDATC Legislative Dinner
  Holiday Inn
  Bismarck, N.D.

Feb. 4-8:
  NTCA Annual Meeting
  Lake Buena Vista, FL

Feb. 13-15:
  Telephone AT&S Conf.
  Radisson Inn
  Bismarck, N.D.

March 13:
  NDATC Board of Directors Meeting
  Statewide Boardroom
  Mandan, N.D.

Mar. 15:
  Red River Rural Telephone
  Annual Meeting
  Abercrombie, N.D.

Mar. 18-21:
  Minn. Telephone Association
  Annual Meeting
  Minneapolis, MN

Mar. 28-30:
  NTCA Legislative Conference
  Washington, D.C.