SI Wireless Sues FCC for Freezing Rip-and-Replace Support
SI Wireless, a small wireless broadband provider, sued the FCC in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit after the FCC blocked payments under its Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program. SI accused the FCC of retaliation. The program pays for the removal of unsecure Chinese gear, mostly from wireless networks. SI serves rural southern Illinois and parts of Tennessee and Kentucky.
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In a filing last week with the court, the provider cited a May 2024 Washington Post article that described “SI’s experience in the Program as exemplifying how waste and mismanagement [have] stifled SI and other participants’ progress and reimbursements.” In July, the FCC cited that article and froze reimbursements to SI, the filing said. “At that point, SI had been reimbursed for less than 14% of the work it had undertaken,” the carrier said. “The FCC has never alleged a legally cognizable theory for its actions. Everything lingers while SI is owed over $47 million with invoices that are two years old.” The FCC’s freeze “inflicts severe financial damage on a business executing critical infrastructure work in support of a national security mandate.”
SI is a long-standing provider that “relied on the FCC’s assurances that providers who expeditiously removed and replaced Huawei materials from their networks would receive … funding,” the carrier told the court. The agency's explanations for the freeze and investigation “reflect recognized hallmarks of retaliation,” SI said: “These include SI’s protected truthful speech, a temporally proximate adverse action invoking questionable legal theories, an unwillingness to recognize prior FCC actions that encouraged SI to participate in the [program] and approved SI’s business plans, a dogged resistance to providing any documents shedding light on its reasons for the actions at issue, and declining a dialogue with the company.”