Totah Communications asked the FCC for a waiver after the Oklahoma-based company missed a Connect America Fund filing deadline because of “technical difficulties.” Those “difficulties prevented the proper certification of performance testing, in which the data had been uploaded and was in full compliance with the testing requirements,” said a filing Friday in docket 10-90. “The subsequent missed certification, which is procedural rather than substantive, has no impact on the Commission’s or [the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s] ability to assess Totah’s compliance with broadband deployment requirement,” it said. “Totah’s penalty was assessed as a pro-rata amount of its universal support allocation for each day beyond the compliance deadline,” which amounts to an estimated $186,278, “an extremely severe penalty given that Totah fulfilled all other testing requirements and one that will impose a financial hardship on the company as it seeks to provide voice and broadband to its Southeastern Kansas and Northeastern Oklahoma customers.”
The FCC Wireline Bureau granted in part Broadband VI’s (BBVI) petition for waiver of its 40% deployment milestone deadline under the Connect USVI Fund, but only until June 30. The original deadline was Dec. 31, 2024. The company sought a waiver through the end of this year. “We find that the public interest is served by granting an additional brief waiver to allow BBVI to come into compliance as quickly as possible with commitments it made as a recipient” of USF support “for the benefit of all residents in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” said an order in Monday’s Daily Digest.
Facing a withholding of some USF high-cost support due to an untimely certification, RiverStreet Communications of North Carolina is asking the FCC Wireline Bureau for a waiver of agency rules concerning submitting annual reporting information. In a docket 10-90 request posted Friday, RiverStreet said that initially it inadvertently failed to certify its Q3 2023 data, though that filing was certified weeks later. It said the Universal Service Administrative Co. notified it last month that a portion of RiverStreet's high-cost support payment would be withheld. RiverStreet said the lost money will delay its planned broadband deployment to the unserved and underserved in rural North Carolina. The shutdown of the performance measures module for much of last fall prevented it from certifying when it was supposed to, it said, subjecting it to notably higher penalties.
The FCC Wireline Bureau on Friday set forth procedures for protecting access to proprietary or confidential information filed in a proceeding on the Alternative Connect America Cost Model program (see 2306260044). “Under the Enhanced A-CAM mechanism, electing carriers receive high-cost support calculated based on model-estimated costs in exchange for deploying 100/20 Mbps or faster broadband to locations without such service at the time of the offer and maintaining or improving such service to locations to which the electing carriers already provided at least that level of service,” the bureau said. “While we are mindful of the sensitive nature of some of the information involved, we are also mindful of the general right of the public, and our desire for the public, to participate in this proceeding in a meaningful way.”
The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau sought comment Friday on a petition by Sorenson Communications and CaptionCall on allowable costs for providing telecommunications relay services (TRS). Comments are due April 14, replies April 28, in dockets 03-123 and 10-51. The redacted petition asks that allowable TRS costs include funds associated with “responding to and defending against FCC enforcement proceedings related to a provider’s compliance with the TRS rules” and "educating members of the U.S. Congress and other policymakers on the TRS program generally and a TRS provider’s operations specifically,” the bureau said. It noted that Sorenson filed a similar petition in 2023.
Comments are due April 14 on FCC-proposed changes to its submarine cable rules, said a notice for Thursday's Federal Register. Replies in the docket 24-523 proceeding are due May 12. The subsea cable NPRM was adopted unanimously by the FCC commissioners in November (see 2411210006) and proposes rules changes that address national security and law enforcement threats to cables, including a three-year periodic reporting requirement for submarine cable landing licenses.
The FCC’s notice of apparent liability against Telnyx is an abuse of power and should be rescinded, said Free State Foundation’s Seth Cooper in a blog post Wednesday. The Feb. 4 Telnyx NAL (see 2503050026) amounts to “regulation by enforcement,” where an agency imposes new requirements on regulatees in enforcement proceedings instead of through a rulemaking, Cooper wrote. Regulation by enforcement “deprives regulated entities of the ability to know and follow the law, so it is contrary to the requirement of fair notice and the prohibition of unfair surprise that are recognized in Supreme Court's Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause jurisprudence.”
The current FCC is likely to support calls by USTelecom and its members for policies that allow carriers to more easily retire copper facilities in their networks (see 2501270047), New Street’s Blair Levin said Wednesday. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr “has always been in favor of assisting [incumbent local exchange carriers] in this transition,” he said in a note to investors.
USTelecom representatives discussed pole attachment concerns in a series of meetings at the FCC with Wireline Bureau staff and aides to Chairman Brendan Carr and Commissioner Anna Gomez. “USTelecom emphasized that its membership is comprised of both pole owners and attachers that are seeking to deploy high-speed broadband as quickly as possible and that we support Commission efforts to speed such deployments, including those funded through BEAD and other government programs,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 17-84. “As USTelecom has explained, however, departing from the negotiated timelines required under the Commission’s current rules and adopting one-size-fits-all make-ready timelines for large make-ready orders will not speed deployment or further the Commission’s goals.”
Accessing investor-owned utility poles in a timely and cost-effective way continues to be a big challenge, ACA Connects and four of its members told FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's office and the Wireline Bureau. In a docket 17-84 filing Tuesday, Shentel said it has open pole permit applications that are 400-plus days old, and the cable ISP hasn't been able to get preapproved utility contractors to perform electrical construction make-ready due to lack of investor-owned utility support. Shentel urged a streamlined process for facilities-based providers doing self-help engineering and electrical construction make-ready. Breezeline raised concerns about non-uniform utility procedures and different states' attachment rules, while Mediacom said it has focused on underground construction for government-funded projects to avoid the pole attachment process. Also accompanying ACA was Armstrong.