NCTA Opposes CenturyLink/Frontier Request for USF Voice Support in Remote Areas
NCTA urged the FCC to deny an incumbent telco bid for an additional $175 million in annual USF subsidy support for voice service in costly remote areas where the ILECs are no longer being subsidized. Responding to a request from…
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CenturyLink and Frontier Communications (see 1602240033), NCTA said price-cap ILECs had "received exclusive access to $9 billion in high-cost support" over six years through the FCC's broadband-oriented Connect America Fund Phase II USF mechanism. "At a time when the Commission repeatedly has acknowledged the importance of providing all Americans with access to broadband, the notion of spending hundreds of millions of consumers’ dollars on a program that does not deliver broadband to a single home should be a non-starter for the Commission," NCTA said in a letter Friday in docket 10-90. NCTA said it didn't oppose providing support to the areas identified by the ILECs. "But any additional money for these areas should be distributed solely through the competitively and technologically neutral Remote Areas Fund the Commission adopted in 2011 for the express purpose of bringing broadband access to these remote areas, not through a new ad hoc fund for incumbent LEC voice services," it said. NCTA said CenturyLink and Frontier hadn't offered any evidence to support their assertion the ILECs would be unable to maintain and repair the voice network in the identified areas without the additional subsidies. It also said the new money "seems to be untethered from any obligation," unlike new broadband support. CenturyLink and Frontier had no comment Monday.