The FCC is ready to authorize support for 1,122 new winning bids in the Connect America Fund Phase II Auction 903, it said Monday in docket 10-90. The 10-year USF broadband funding support is pending an irrevocable letter of credit and bankruptcy code opinion letter from legal counsel for each state where a provider has winning bids. The deadline for the materials is Aug. 5. Any long-form applicants that fail to file the required documents in time will be in default and subject to forfeiture. The FCC also said Crocker Communications doesn't intend to pursue its winning bids and is subject to forfeiture.
The FCC should equitably address discrepancies between the number of rural locations a broadband provider is funded to serve after alternative Connect America cost model (A-CAM) auctions and the number of actual locations the provider encounters during a network build-out phase, industry said in comments to FCC posted through Monday in docket 10-90, rather than impose penalties to providers when pre-bidding estimates turn out to be wrong (see 1907110003). The agency's Wireline Bureau "should study the impact of actual location discrepancies before deciding what measures are appropriate for A-CAM support recipients that experience location shortfalls," ITTA said.
INDIANAPOLIS -- There are alternatives to Congress and the FCC requiring carriers and others to remove from their networks equipment made by Chinese telecom gear makers, NARUC was told. Though some state commissioners later expressed skepticism, industry panelists (see 1:30 p.m. event listing) largely backed monitoring networks of U.S. companies for cyberattacks, including from Huawei or ZTE, and testing all equipment before installation for vulnerabilities. Stakeholders generally want testing and monitoring across the board, not limited to one company or manufacturers based in one country.
Members of Congress continue introducing or working on bills targeting national security concerns with Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei, including a pending bill from House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., lawmakers and lobbyists told us. Some on Capitol Hill said they're holding out hope that a conference committee to marry the disparate House and Senate versions of the FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act will agree to include a trio of House-passed amendments that target Huawei and ZTE. But they and others said legislative vehicles and these recent stand-alone bills should be considered as an alternative if the conference process fails to bear fruit.
It would be “extremely difficult” to back additional USF money to the U.S. Virgin Islands without “a firm commitment and a timeline” on ending the territory’s diversion of 911 fees, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly wrote Gov. Albert Bryan (D), released Thursday. “Your guarantees and demonstrated compliance plan could go a long way toward alleviating Commission concerns, which if left unaddressed could put precious USF support at risk.” The USF money could go toward restoring the territory’s communications infrastructure, O’Rielly said. It diverted over $1.2 million in 911 fees, according to data from 2017, with 30 percent going to the Health Department and 30 percent to the fire service, O’Rielly said. He noted Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Chairman Ajit Pai are also concerned about such moves. The governor’s office didn’t comment.
Educational groups asked the FCC to reject a petition from Texas carriers to initiate a rulemaking on E-rate to favor telecom companies that provided fiber to a school or library over an overbuilder during competitive bidding for the USF program (see 1907020016), in replies posted through Wednesday in docket 13-184. "Texas Carriers paint a very different picture than most rural carriers," said Funds for Learning. "Rather than working to earn business, they ask the FCC to regulate competition away." Texas education associations said the Texas carriers should participate in competitive bidding if they want future E-rate funding, "but the petitioners, instead of proposing bids, would rather propose unnecessary rules that allow them to remain on the sidelines without consequence." E-rate Partners said "the petition limits competitive bidding instead of encouraging it." Incompas said the proposals would significantly distort the competitive bidding process, cause higher prices and delay the application process for schools trying to upgrade their broadband services. Uniti Fiber said the "requested rule changes are unnecessary, do not offer solutions, and would harm the competitive market for E-rate services by installing a thicket of bureaucratic barriers to deploying broadband." Petitioners Central Texas Telephone Cooperative, Peoples Telephone Cooperative and Totelcom Communications said they "seek to eliminate waste, not competition," and characterizations of protectionism "are patently false, unsubstantiated and misunderstand many aspects of the Petitioners' proposal." The carriers encourage a mechanism "to consider and negotiate a reasonable rate to lease existing fiber to avoid duplicative costs and unnecessary overbuilding" in ways that would benefit both USF and schools. NTCA also asked for a rulemaking to reexamine E-rate rules adopted five years ago.
State commissioners hope the FCC takes note of coming NARUC resolutions (see 1907100028) on delaying some further changes to a billion dollar federal subsidy for poor people to get phone and broadband services. In interviews before their Sunday-Wednesday meeting to consider two such draft proposals, some expressed optimism the federal regulator might make changes midway through program revisions begun under the last presidential administration. Another telecom resolution, advocating no overall USF budget, lacks a sponsor and won't move forward unless it adds one, stakeholders noted this week.
Comments are due Aug. 16, replies Sept. 3 on an FCC proposal to modernize the E-rate program for schools and libraries, says a notice for Wednesday's Federal Register on docket 13-184. The NPRM would make permanent a 5-year-old budget approach to USF funding for internal broadband connectivity technology such as Wi-Fi routers to anchor institutions (see 1906190019).
The FCC is sharing illustrative examples of how Universal Service Administrative Co. recovers money from participants in the alternative Connect America model (A-CAM) program that don't provide the highest level of service they contracted to offer to as many locations as promised. It said in docket 10-90 a carrier's flexibility to serve 95 percent of its required obligations by the end of a 10-year term without penalty "may not be disproportionately applied to 25/3 Mbps obligations, rather than its 10/1 Mbps obligations." The agency upholds separate buildout obligations for tribal lands if the participating carrier elects an offer including an adjustment based on the tribal broadband factor: "Failing to enforce separate buildout obligations for Tribal lands would result in windfall support amounts for some A-CAM II carriers and would thwart the Commission's established goal of broadband deployment in rural Tribal communities." Industry raised concerns models used to develop buildout obligations for some rural USF programs don't resemble reality (see 1906210010). Some groups want to make sure a second broadband connection delivered to a residence for a distinct home office or business counts as a location (see 1907110003).
Rural broadband providers will start receiving funding this month in the third wave of last year's Connect America Fund Phase II auction, the FCC said Monday. This wave allocates $524 million in USF spending to expand broadband to more than 200,000 homes and businesses in 23 states. In the latest wave, the FCC authorized $39.2 million for broadband deployment in 26 rural New York counties through winning bidders Gtel, MTC Cable, Ostego Electric Cooperative, Slic and Verizon, the agency said, all of which bid to deliver downstream speeds of at least 100 Mbps and upstream speeds of 20 Mbps. Over the next several months, the FCC is expected to approve additional applications of winning bidders from last fall's auctions and authorize remaining funding totaling $1.488 billion to support broadband expansion to more than 700,000 rural locations over 10 years. Eventually, CAF could be replaced by a new 10-year, $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund proposed earlier this year at the White House (see 1904120065). Commissioners are expected to vote at the Aug. 1 meeting whether to release an NPRM, currently in draft form, on the RDOF (see 1907110031).