Monica Hogan

Broadband provider groups asked the FCC and Universal Services Administrative Co. how to determine when a home-based business is counted as a serviceable location under a USF program (see 1906210010). In comments posted Wednesday and Thursday to docket 10-90, NTCA, ITTA and Midwestern telecom alliances responded to a petition for clarification or declaratory ruling by Northeast Iowa Telephone and Western Iowa Telephone Association on the definition of locations included in the alternative Connect America cost model (A-CAM) for residences that also are businesses. NTCA challenged a discrepancy between FCC rules and orders, plus industry practices and realities in rural America, and a USAC FAQ. The USAC document says for a carrier to count a business run out of a house, barn, shed or other structure on a property as a separate serviceable location, there must be a separate facility line or drop to the business apart from that serving the home. NTCA said the FAQ guidance "does not reflect the realities and challenge of deploying networks and delivering services in rural areas." ITTA wants the FCC to rule that home-based businesses registered with a state or other governmental entity and in eligible census blocks "are considered locations and do not require separate subscriptions to facilities to count as such." Such a separate subscription requirement "can be found nowhere in the Commission's rules and orders," said the Iowa Communications Alliance, Minnesota Telecom Alliance and Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association.

The FCC would use two reverse auctions to distribute $20.4 billion in funding over the next decade through a Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) that Chairman Ajit Pai announced at the White House in April (see 1904120008), per a draft NPRM released Thursday. The new USF program (in docket 19-126) would help deliver broadband service tiers of at least 25/3 Mbps to rural communities unserved and underserved. The draft circulated Wednesday; commissioners will vote on it at their Aug. 1 meeting (see 1907100072).

The FCC will give relief to incumbent LECs, granting them forbearance from pricing regulation on lower-speed legacy transport and requirements to sell the transport as unbundled network elements (UNE) to competitive carriers that then use them in their business data services, voting unanimously at its meeting Wednesday on a petition from USTelecom (see 1905130050). The agency issued a draft order in late June in docket 18-141 (see 1906190044). The new order allows CLECs to continue to buy the UNE transport from ILECs for the next six months, and gives them three years (concurrently) to transition away from the transport networks or negotiate new business agreements with the ILECs.

A $100 million Connected Care telehealth pilot is expected to get the go-ahead with bipartisan support Wednesday when FCC commissioners vote at their Wednesday meeting, said agency officials. It also received broad support from patient advocates and telehealth interests, as announced Monday by Commissioner Brendan Carr, who's spearheading the pilot. A draft NPRM released last month asks for stakeholder feedback on how to structure the plan to provide broadband support to homes in a pilot that would test the efficacy of telehealth services and remote patient monitoring (see 1906190013).

Incumbent rural broadband carriers and competitors disagreed in response to a petition from Texas carriers asking the FCC to prohibit the use of E-rate dollars from the USF to overbuild fiber networks for schools and libraries (see 1905230005). In comments posted to docket 13-184 through Tuesday, incumbents said current competitive bidding rules for E-rate funding can favor large, regional providers over local rural carriers and lead to inefficient use of government dollars when they support the builds of redundant broadband networks at the expense of unserved institutions. Those opposing the petition wrote that the proposals could stifle broadband competition, raise prices for rural schools and libraries, and drive up costs to the USF.

A polygon shapefile approach to submitting provider broadband data, endorsed by NCTA, and a location fabric proposal backed by USTelecom both add valuable data to inform updated national broadband maps from the FCC and aren't mutually exclusive, said cable and telco representatives. Congress asked the FCC to develop more-granular broadband maps to better pinpoint where service is available to consumers and at what speeds. The agency is expected to address the topic at its August meeting (see 1906200048).

The telecom industry is eager to help mitigate national security threats stemming from equipment installed on its networks that could be compromised by vendors' ties to the Chinese government, executives said Thursday. Stakeholders wanted to reassure Commissioner Geoffrey Starks at an FCC workshop on his "find it, fix it, fund it" proposal to address vulnerabilities in communications networks (see 1906190050). But carriers, especially those with small, rural subscriber bases, said "rip-and-replace" missions for companies that have Huawei or ZTE equipment installed on their wireless, wireline or broadband networks would be neither quick nor inexpensive. Some estimates place the cost to remove and replace the compromised equipment at well over $1 billion.

FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly is open to contribution overhaul to support the USF but doesn't support adding a usage fee for broadband services, he said Tuesday in conversation with former Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. Adding a fee to broadband could tip the price of the service beyond the reach of some consumers, O'Rielly said. "Raising the cost could change adoption rates. It does matter." O'Rielly spoke about capping universal broadband funds at the Hudson Institute where Furchtgott-Roth is director of Center for the Economics of the Internet.

ISP stakeholders want predictable rules on how industry can collect and use consumer data. "We need federal privacy regulation," said FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson Thursday. "We can't deal with a patchwork. We need one law." Attorney and AT&T veteran Robert Quinn at Wilkinson Barker, agreed. "If you don't have a federal law, you're going to have 45 state laws." If the issue isn't addressed, he told the Phoenix Center, "that's a fail for the federal government."

The FCC is expected to take comments this summer on an NPRM on E-rate modernization that would make permanent a 5-year-old budget approach to funding internal broadband connectivity technology, such as Wi-Fi routers. The draft on circulation addresses so-called category 2 funding, officials said. It's expected to follow recommendations from a February Wireline Bureau report recommending the agency renew its approach for equal distribution of funding (see 1902110056). That tack replaced a "two-in-five" budget method that allowed anchor institutions to apply for the category 2 funding two of every five years.