Alaskan Carriers: FCC Should Defer Decisions on Wireless Support
The Alaska Telecom Association urged the FCC to move with care as it considers how to implement parts of the Alaska Connect Fund (ACF), approved by FCC commissioners in November (see 2411050002). Comments were due Monday on a Further NPRM on mobile and fixed wireless under the fund in docket 23-238.
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“While ATA understands that the Commission is eager to resolve the many important questions in the FNPRM, it is premature to address many of these issues,” the group said: “ATA’s members are still in the process of assessing the impact of the framework and requirements established in the ACF Order, which was adopted mere months ago, on their existing deployments and future plans.” ATA said it’s difficult to comment until the FCC addresses how fixed broadband deployment affects mobile deployment and releases the preliminary map or maps of ACF-eligible areas for mobile support.
The FCC should defer consideration of questions raised in the FNPRM “until after these issues are resolved, but at minimum until [the Wireless Bureau] has released, sought comment on, and finalized the maps that will show the areas that are eligible and ineligible for ACF mobile support, and which eligible areas are in duplicate-support, single-support, or other eligible areas,” ATA said.
Provider GCI agreed with ATA on the wisdom of waiting. One question raised in the FNPRM was how to calculate support across hexagons at the hex-9 level. “When attributing support to individual hex-9s, the Commission’s methodology must account for the fact that costs are not evenly distributed across all areas,” GCI said. Otherwise, high-cost hexes won’t receive sufficient support, it said. “Hex-9s that are ineligible for support based on the presence of unsubsidized competitors should have zero attributed support, to reflect that an unsubsidized provider has been able to offer high-speed mobile broadband without support,” GCI argued: “The effect of this change to the proposed valuation methodology would be to allocate more ACF support to areas that clearly need it.”
OptimERA, which serves remote Unalaska, Alaska, urged the FCC to rethink how it provides support. “Decades of various plans and funding schemes have left dozens of communities with no mobile service whatsoever,” the carrier said: “Countless other communities still have just 2G service, lagging far behind most of the lower 48 and urban areas in Alaska.” OptimERA said its alternate proposal “would enable carriers to receive support based on building, maintaining, and operating networks that consumers actually use in high-cost areas, proportional to actual usage, and weighted to favor state-of-the-art technologies.”