Conditions Sought for Liberty/GCI

carriers. Monday was the deadline for comments and petitions in FCC docket 17-114 on the $1.12 billion deal, with replies and oppositions to petitions due July 5 (see 1705220015). GCI's "stranglehold on middle-mile facilities and its resulting effect as gatekeeper on competition ... is of concern and ... the proposed transaction cannot be permitted to exacerbate" it, said fiber network operator Quintillion in its petition to deny posted Tuesday. Along with the five-year commitment, Quintillion suggested the FCC condition approval on the agency adopting reporting requirements to verify direct and indirect federal spending aimed at promoting broadband and telco services in Alaska. It also urged conditions that GCI use a defined percentage of federal Alaska Plan grants and loans for developing middle-mile operations connecting unserved areas, and that for at least five years GCI offer wholesale transport services at commercially reasonable speeds on federally funded or subsidized middle mile facilities to unaffiliated providers at reasonable pricing and on a nondiscriminatory basis. It recommended the FCC bar GCI from over-subscription and throttling that materially degrades performance. Alaska Communications Systems' petition to deny recommended service restoration agreements and said the deal should be predicated on GCI, over the next five years, using any direct or indirect federal support it receives at least partially toward more middle-mile infrastructure linking rural communities with existing networks. ACS said the deal should be conditioned on a requirement any GCI infrastructure that relies on federal support be subject to common carrier requirements including that access be available on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. GCI didn't comment Tuesday.