Small Carrier Groups Agree on Need for Changes to 5G Fund Rules
The Competitive Carriers Association supported petitions for reconsideration of the FCC’s August order launching a 5G Fund filed by the Coalition of Rural Wireless Carriers (CWRC) and the Rural Wireless Association (see 2501140056). CCA agrees that “several aspects” of the order “require prompt reconsideration,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 20-32.
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CCA called for “improvements to mobile mapping data collection and challenge processes …, changes to the 5G Fund’s use of mapping information to determine eligibility, a rigorous basis [for] complying with the USF statute for determining the 5G Fund’s budget, and better timing of the 5G Fund Phase I auction to leverage other broadband deployment programs.”
The group warned that “significant issues with the mobile mapping process, including problems competitive carriers and rural consumers have been experiencing with the mobile mapping challenge process and mobile broadband measurement methodologies used by the FCC, are setting the 5G Fund up for failure.”
NTCA said the FCC should hold off on a 5G Fund auction until BEAD program awards are made. That “will permit the Commission to leverage BEAD deployments to lower the cost of mobile deployment and more surgically target 5G funds to areas that need them for additional investment and/or to assist in supporting the costs of ongoing operations.”
But Verizon, in comments earlier this month, urged the FCC to deny the petitions. “RWA and CRWC ignore the constraint imposed on the 5G Fund budget by the already-overburdened USF contribution mechanism.” Verizon opposed, in particular, the arguments that a $9 billion fund is too small. “If anything,” the budget adopted by the FCC “already stretches the definition of ‘fiscally responsible’ because it will increase the contribution factor from its current level of 36.6 percent (already a record high) to about 40 percent,” it said.
RWA said there's broad support for the proposals in its recon petition to rethink the 7/1 Mbps speed threshold for defining eligible areas; “the amount of the 5G Rural Fund budget; and the FCC’s decision to allow the 5G Rural Fund auction to proceed before BEAD Program awards are made.” RWA noted that the only opposition came from Verizon.