RLECs Say FCC Budget 'Haircuts' Harming Broadband Deployment, Press for Relief
Rural telcos said FCC constraints are "ravaging" their ability to meet broadband needs. "Budget control mechanism 'haircuts' -- now in the 12-to-15 percent range and apparently increasing to 19-to-20 percent or so in 2018 -- are the primary current factor…
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disrupting the predictability and sufficiency" of "critical high-cost support revenue streams," said a WTA filing Friday in docket 10-90 on meetings it and members had with Wireline Bureau officials. "Growing shortfalls are making it extremely hard to undertake broadband extensions and upgrades and obtain the loans needed to finance them; forcing cutbacks in staffing, maintenance and service operations; and making it difficult to repay existing broadband construction loans." They urged "the current high-cost support budget for Rate-of-Return carriers be increased, and that relief be provided from the burgeoning budget control mechanism 'haircuts' ravaging RoR Path RLECs." The FCC should address "issues teed up for reconsideration or further action in connection with high-cost [USF] reforms, including a recommended, readily available path toward helping to mitigate the pervasive insufficiency of USF support and greater prospective confirmation as to the eligibility of certain expenses for cost recovery," said an NTCA filing on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly.