If nothing else, time can certainly be characterized as the biggest blabbermouth in the known universe. Because for all things uncertain, the fallback position is: "Time will tell."

Things can look up or down, promising or futile, hopeful or not. But only time will tell which they will be in the end. And as it is with time, or our perception of it, there is no end as far as we know. What appears to be the resolution of a long-standing problem is often just the beginning of another.

Take the Telecom Act, please. Since 1934, communications companies, regulators and legislators have been trying to wrestle this thing to the ground, only to have a wireless limb poke out here or an IP appendage stick out there, causing adjustments, changes and general fodder for more argument (which is good). People accuse service providers of being sloth-like in their technology approaches, but they often can move only as fast as the red tape and rules will let them. And it seems they have been waiting on universal service funding reform and other changes forever.

However, technically speaking, anyone who really thinks that way has no idea how long 14 billion years can be and how incredibly thin the slice of time is we humans have been playing on this planet and allowing ourselves the guilty pleasure to think that anything the FCC can do, or that we can do, can be considered a long time, let alone forever.

Nonetheless, we get impatient. It is our nature. So it indeed seems like we have been waiting eons for USF reform, or certainly no less than an era or two. If not that long, then perhaps just a geologic period -- or at very least an epoch. Either way, the time of change is upon us.

The FCC's Joint Board has made its recommendations. And the NTCA, for one, is happy with some of the initial results, particularly its recommended decision on long-term universal service reform with current endorsement of the continuation of the embedded cost methodology for rural incumbent local exchange carrier, the elimination of the identical support rule, and the continued support for capping CETC high-cost USF support.

Small victories, they are called by the NTCA. And that's OK because small epochs make a period and small periods make an era and so on. I would say we will see official rulings soon, but the times are serious, and we are likely to see a lot of very serious debate to go along with it. So while things in the rural market look promising, only time will tell, and time is a lot more patient than we are.

E-mail me at tmcelligot@telephonyonline.com