Members of the Ad Hoc Broadband for Rural Health Group complained to the FCC about their difficulty understanding the rules for the rural health care program’s Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF). They met with aides to Commissioners Anna Gomez and Olivia Trusty and agency staff, said a filing Friday in docket 25-133.
An FCC order conforming certain rules “to reflect the rules that are actually in effect,” resulting from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision invalidating the agency's latest net neutrality order (see 2501020028), becomes effective Friday, according to a Federal Register notice released Thursday. The order also addresses the 8th Circuit's 2002 Iowa Utilities Board II decision.
The FCC’s "Build America Agenda," outlined by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr last month (see 2507020036), will mean faster broadband deployment, Commissioner Olivia Trusty said in a speech Wednesday in Mississippi. She spoke at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, noting that faster broadband is key to telehealth.
Foothills Connect, which notified the FCC early this year that it wouldn't meet its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund first interim buildout milestone in Kentucky (see 2501220004), told the agency this week that it's "making substantial progress" on closing the milestone gap. In docket 19-126 Tuesday, Foothills said it's still struggling with delays beyond its control in getting right-of-way approvals and obtaining easements. It also cited workforce issues related to hiring qualified construction contractors.
As states race to meet NTIA's Sept. 4 deadline to submit their revised final BEAD plans under the agency's new rules, the future of the program's non-deployment funding is in “uncharted territory,” wrote CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson in a blog Wednesday. Dawson raised questions about whether NTIA can ignore Congress’ directive to spend the full $42.5 billion on both broadband infrastructure and non-deployment initiatives (see 2507300011). Although NTIA didn't definitively eliminate non-deployment uses for BEAD funding, Dawson noted that some in the industry believe the agency might “kill all non-deployment funds as a way to take credit for ‘returning’ money to Treasury,” while others remain hopeful NTIA will allow certain projects. He warned that the shift could also lead to “significantly less BEAD funding for fiber and more for satellite and fixed wireless broadband” after the agency removed its fiber-first preference. "It’s one thing for the White House to issue executive orders that countermand Congressional spending," Dawson wrote: "It’s a whole lot fuzzier if an agency like NTIA can directly ignore Congress."
VoIP-Pal's antitrust complaint is full of "prolix, repetitive, and at points incoherent allegations" and is "a last-ditch effort by a failing company to avoid the inevitable," defendants AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon told a federal court in a motion to dismiss the case Friday. VoIP-Pal is suing the three carriers in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that they're using their market dominance to deliberately withhold unbundled voice-over-Wi-Fi calling and texting from consumers (see 2410300004). The carriers' motion to dismiss (docket 1:24-cv-03051) said that since VoIP-Pal has suffered multiple court defeats in patent-infringement lawsuits, it's using its complaint as a different way of monetizing its patents. VoIP-Pal's offer to settle if one of the Big Three would buy it for $8.75 billion "lays bare what this case is really about," the carriers said. They added that VoIP-Pal lacks antitrust standing and that its complaint fails to allege that any defendant engaged in racketeering activity or that racketeering activity caused VoIP-Pal injury.
The FCC Wireline Bureau on Monday released a list of U.S. counties where conditional forbearance from the obligation to offer Lifeline-supported voice service applies. Under the commission’s 2016 Lifeline order (see 1807230027), the "forbearance applies only to the Lifeline voice obligation of eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) that are designated for purposes of receiving both high-cost and Lifeline support" and not to Lifeline-only ETCs, the bureau said. The 2016 order established the forbearance "in targeted areas where certain competitive conditions are met,” and the FCC “directed the Bureau to release a yearly public notice announcing the counties in which the competitive conditions are met.”
Public interest groups raised concerns about an FCC draft notice of inquiry that proposes changes to how the agency prepares its Telecom Act Section 706 reports to Congress (see 2507170048). Commissioners are set to vote on it at their meeting Thursday. Representatives of Public Knowledge, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and X-Lab met with an aide to Commissioner Anna Gomez, according to a filing Thursday in docket 25-233.
AT&T has used a third-party radio access network automation app (rApp) from Ericsson to optimize its network, the companies announced Tuesday, noting that it's the first such use of an rApp on a live network. “This accomplishment marks a decisive moment in the industry’s move from closed, single-vendor Self-Organizing Networks toward an open, future-proof architecture based on the standards and frameworks set out by the Open RAN Alliance,” said a news release.
With an almost 65% reduction in BEAD-eligible locations over the past two years, broadband experts on Wednesday highlighted several challenges to deployment and funding that could affect the program's progress.