USAC Revises Lifeline National Verifier Plan; Sprint, TracFone, Others File on Broadband
Universal Service Administrative Co. issued a revised National Verifier Plan for the FCC Lifeline low-income broadband/telecom subsidy program. The plan, posted Monday in docket 11-42, updated a draft plan to shift administrative oversight away from Lifeline providers and to a…
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national verifier (see 1612010043). The plan incorporated tweaks addressing comments (see 1612270027 and 1701030035), along with a new section summarizing USAC responses to queries, many of them technical. TracFone filed comments last week saying the draft plan largely met FCC objectives but it asked USAC to make further modifications to facilitate customer enrollments, provide timely responses to application denials and "manage the National Verifier in an efficient and non-discriminatory manner." USAC plans to update the plan further every six months. There were also several filings Monday and last week on the FCC's expansion of Lifeline coverage to broadband service. Sprint made a filing asking the FCC to clarify two aspects of its mobile broadband minimum service requirements: "whether W-Fi can be used to meet the minimum data allotment requirement; and whether the 3G technology standard is met if a Lifeline ETC [eligible telecom carrier] provides the subscriber who is classified as a broadband customer with a feature phone that cannot accommodate such technology." Another TracFone filing asked commission staff to look into a practice involving "abuse by certain Lifeline providers of the 'port freeze' rule in order to 'lock up' for 12 months those Lifeline customers who were enrolled in voice-only Lifeline services and who were provided with standard cellular telephones suitable for voice and text message, but which are unsuitable for use with Broadband Internet Access Service." It said the practice would undermine the FCC's broadband move unless addressed. Assist Wireless, Boomerang Wireless, Free Mobile, Easy Wireless, i-Wireless, Karma Mobility, Red Pocket and Telrite made filings in docket 09-197 contesting Wireline Bureau decisions to remove their Lifeline Broadband Provider (LBP) designation petitions from streamlined processing. They said the LBP process "was in danger of becoming a replica of the dysfunctional federal ETC designation and Lifeline-only compliance processes." The bureau issued an order Wednesday conditionally designating Applied Research Designs, Kajeet, Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico, Northland Cable Television and Wabash Independent Networks as LBP providers.