To put it mildly, the most contentious issue in the working group involved the survival of any state rate regulation. The current draft retains to states the ability to retain a residential basic local rate, with a process whereby that rate can be petitioned away.

On the broader question of price controls, if it had its druthers, the group would abolish all rate regulation. However, a concession to the longstanding universal service tradition of communications regulation leads toward retaining the basic service rate on a grandfathered basis. Under this model then there would be no rebalancing of the rate, but just a "rough justice" grandfathering of the various state rates. This would mean that companies would remove all tariffs, cease all rate filings and cost studies, leaving only local exchange maps and a single basic res service tariff in place (in the lingo, the 1FR) at the state level. All other rates would be deregulated and there could be no imputation of the 1FR rate into any packages.