Incumbent local exchange carriers will have to comply with fewer regulations as the result of an order adopted by the FCC last week. The commission also issued two notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that could lead to a further reduction in incumbent telco regulatory requirements....Learn More

A report issued by the Federal Communications Commission last week recommends a substantial reduction in the rate of return that the nation’s smallest telephone companies earn through the inter-carrier compensation (ICC) system. Since 1990 that rate has been 11.25% but if the recommendations made by...Learn More

The FCC on Friday proposed a trial that would enable telecom service providers to replace traditional wireline phone service with wireless service. In addition the commission proposed two separate but related trials – including a VoIP interconnection trial and a trial of next-generation 911 emergency...Learn More

The nation’s largest service providers would like to see regulations governing local phone service relaxed – and as data compiled by the National Regulatory Research Institute illustrates, AT&T has been particularly active on this front. Twenty-five states limited or eliminated public service commission oversight of...Learn More

One in five U.S. public libraries have benefited from the broadband stimulus program created in 2009, according to a report issued yesterday from the American Library Association. “In a time of flat and decreased budgets, [broadband stimulus] funding has been a gateway to improved technology...Learn More

Former telecom trade association chief and current venture capitalist Tom Wheeler, nominated yesterday to replace Julius Genachowski as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has been hailed for his industry expertise. In a blog that he has written regularly since joining Core Capital Partners several...Learn More

The funding that low-income people receive to help cover the cost of phone service could be used to cover broadband if a bill introduced in the House of Representatives this week becomes law. Congresswomen Doris Matsui and Anna Eshoo, along with Congressman Henry Waxman, introduced...Learn More

Cal.net, a wireless Internet service provider based in California’s mountainous Gold Country, is offering customers data rates of up to 3 Mbps downstream over a distance of up to five miles without line of sight using broadband wireless equipment that operates in vacant TV broadcast...Learn More

The FCC today gave the go-ahead for Vonage to conduct a trial that will enable the VOIP provider to have direct access to nearly 150,000 phone numbers for assignment to its customers. The commission also is considering making phone numbers available more broadly to VOIP...Learn More

The rural telecom industry seems to have caught the attention of legislators.  Yesterday two members of the House of Representatives announced the formation of a bipartisan working group of the Energy and Commerce Committee that will work to “promote rural telecommunication issues within the Committee.”...Learn More

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Aspen Institute announced today that Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will become senior fellow at the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program upon his resignation from the Commission in the coming weeks. At the Institute,...Learn More

John Strode, vice president of external affairs for rural telco Ritter Communications, today offered the easiest-to-understand definition of quintile regression analysis that I’ve heard yet – and I’ve heard a lot of people try to explain the controversial statistical methodology, which the FCC has been...Learn More