FCC Staff Examining RDOF Requests, NARUC Told

FCC staff are examining Rural Digital Opportunity Fund waiver requests (see 2106040058), an agency staffer told NARUC Monday in Denver. Some eligible telecom carrier applications “are still being worked on” and “we will be processing through those waiver requests,” said Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force Chief of Staff Audra Hale-Maddox. Staff also are "diligently reviewing those long-form applications” for RDOF, she said virtually on a panel with in-person and remote participants. Some ISPs sought additional time beyond the June 7 FCC ETC deadline, and states have also supported such requests, panelists noted. They said there likely will be some safe harbor for those companies to get their ETC extension requests granted and/or not face adverse action. Joseph Witmer, counsel to Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman Gladys Brown Dutrieuille, later asked about possible challenges to RDOF funding awards: “What happens if a lawsuit spins out of this.” He wondered if it could slow things. Hale-Maddox declined to comment on possible legal or policymaking issues. Long-form applications “are a, shall we say, controversial issue,” said Witmer, noting he spoke only for himself. “Interested stakeholders” want to examine details of broadband deployment plans and want to ensure bidders can provide speeds and latency as promised, he said. “I know ETC is burdensome, I know it takes time” and “some bidders don’t want it at all,” the PUC staffer said: “We are talking here about scarce public capital” however, and ETC status is a vehicle for oversight. Some 15 companies have sought ETC-deadline delays, Witmer estimated in an interview. He thinks the FCC might treat those requests as it did in a previous auction, Connect America Fund Phase II, with safe harbor when there are good-faith compliance efforts. Although there aren’t RDOF deadlines here, Hale-Maddox said staffers “anticipate that will be moving forward with completing those reviews” and that CAF II and RDOF time frames may be similar. “There’s a lot of concern at the state level” about “untested technologies” potentially getting RDOF money, said Tilson Vice President-Utilities Elin Swanson Katz. States understand why the FCC must be technology-neutral in its funding decisions, she added. States hope dollars will go to fiber-based tech whether wireless, wireline or otherwise, and utilities want to play a role, said Katz.