FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he will circulate an order for the Nov. 19 commissioners’ meeting that would bar providers from using USF support to buy from suppliers deemed a threat to national security. Pai will also propose that the FCC seek comment on a process to remove and replace such equipment from USF-funded networks.
A notice of inquiry for the FCC's annual broadband deployment report was adopted 3-2 Oct. 4 and posted Wednesday afternoon. Comments are due Nov. 22, replies Dec. 9, in docket 19-285. The NOI circulated in July (see 1908090012) and concerns were raised about incorrect data. Now, Democratic commissioners' concerns focused on lack of better data collection methods. The FCC proposed to maintain 25/3 Mbps as the metric for fixed broadband and will take comment on whether another approach is justified.
ISPs and state telecom authorities asked the FCC to delay the first-round auction for its $20 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund until it gets better broadband mapping data. In replies posted through Tuesday in docket 19-126, the California Public Utilities Commission, National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA) and Navajo Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, among others, supported delay.
The FCC sees 6 GHz as critical to the future of Wi-Fi and unlicensed, said Chairman Ajit Pai at the Mobile World Congress in Los Angeles Tuesday. The band will provide “huge 160 MHz channels that could be used for unlicensed innovation, the likes of which we only conceive now,” said Pai, interviewed by CTIA President Meredith Baker. The FCC is looking for “an accommodation” for public safety, business and other users of the band, he said.
Trade groups representing Connect America Fund ISP auction participants urged in interviews and filings with the FCC to fine-tune a draft order on reconsideration that would update broadband performance measurements for the rural, high-cost USF program. Commissioners vote on the order, in docket 10-90, Friday (see 1910040053). Interested parties met with officials, sometimes repeatedly, in recent weeks.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission seeks more state USF comments by Nov. 15 in docket 201800066-PUD, the agency said Monday. Verizon resisted using Oklahoma USF money for broadband, in comments earlier this month (see 1910110059).
USTelecom sought clarification from the FCC and Universal Service Administrative Co. about how USF compliance might be called into question if participants in the high cost universal broadband portal edit their broadband mapping data as geocoding technologies improve. USTelecom said "a change to the fourth digit of a geocoded decimal (representing a change in accuracy of about 10 meters) would be a workable demarcation point for determining a change that required a deletion." Deleting and resubmitting a location would erase the year a broadband location was originally deployed, it said. "If a carrier 'deleted' a number of locations for a certain year and then those same locations were re-uploaded in the HUBB with a different deployment year, it could retroactively call into question the carrier's compliance." USTelecom with members AT&T, CenturyLink, Consolidated, Frontier and Windstream met with USAC and the FCC Wireline Bureau staff Wednesday, and the association said, posted Monday in docket 10-90, it "understood that if the carrier had previously met a deployment year's milestone, and then, by virtue of 'deleting' and resubmitting locations with better geocodes, fell under the milestone for a particular year," there would be no penalty "as long as the cumulative number of locations submitted to date for the life of the program remained above the current threshold."
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wants more healthcare providers to contribute to a docket on a proposed Connected Care pilot program before it moves from NPRM to order. Carr touted the pilot Thursday at a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition conference.
USF stakeholders should make more improvements to broadband mapping, especially before the FCC begins awarding some $20 billion over about 10 years in the next version of its USF high-cost fund. That's the consensus in Q&A with us at a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition panel (see 9:45 a.m.) Thursday and from audience members. Stakeholders targeted telcos, which some said don't always know down to a small-geographic level what areas they serve with internet service, and the FCC. The commission has been improving its mapping, working with others in the federal government including the Rural Utilities Service, said RUS Assistant Administrator-Telecom Programs Chad Parker.
Public interest and labor advocacy groups including Public Knowledge and Communications Workers of America oppose an FCC proposal to place an overall budget cap on its USF programs (see 1906030059), "Abandon this proceeding and focus its attention on strengthening the USF, rather than exhausting time and resources on a proposal that runs counter to the USF's mission and Congress' intent," they asked, posted Tuesday in docket 06-122.