The Open Technology Institute asked the FCC to reject an NTCA petition for waiver of increased Lifeline fixed wireline minimum broadband performance standards set to take effect Dec. 1 (see 1907300076). Posted Monday in docket 10-90, OTI said NTCA failed to answer critical questions about its ability to meet the new service standards raised when the trade group petitioned for similar standards waivers in recent years. OTI, however, credited NTCA for raising an "important new issue regarding the voice phase-down" in USF support for Lifeline. "The potential reduction in subsidy could affect affordability of fixed wireline plans," OTI agreed. It asked the FCC to "delay the phase-down or abandon it altogether." In reply comments due Friday in docket 11-42, NTCA said it received universal support for its petition in the initial round.
The FCC Wireline Bureau OK'd limited waiver to the Florida Public Service Commission, extends till Oct. 11 to certify USF eligible telecom carriers (ETCs) through a Universal Service Administrative Co. database, said an order Monday on docket 10-90. The bureau granted the waiver on its own motion after the FPSC postponed a meeting to vote on certification for 11 ETCs due to last month's Hurricane Dorian.
House Communications Subcommittee members Reps. Adam Kinzinger and John Shimkus, both R-Ill., and two other GOP members of the state's House delegation lauded the FCC Monday for allocating more than $26 million of its latest round of funding from last year's USF Connect America Fund Phase II auction for rural broadband projects in Illinois. The FCC announced a total of $112 million in CAF II broadband funding last week (see 1909120037). “The gap in broadband services across the state of Illinois is stark and needs to be addressed,” Kinzinger said. The others praising the funding for Illinois were Rodney Davis and Darin LaHood.
Staff is entering the second phase of a lengthy process to update the FCC's main filing system. After spending about a year on internal communications and other early work, agency employees are now poised to speak with external stakeholders. The update may include ways to help prevent the agency's filing system from being overwhelmed with fraudulent or spam comments that could slow it down, and it could register users, officials told the agency's Consumer Advisory Committee. Unlike past filing system revamps, this one may have bigger changes, staff told CAC.
The proposed Q4 contribution factor for USF programs is 25 percent, the FCC Office of Managing Director announced in Friday's Daily Digest on docket 96-45. That's a record high (see 1909030010). The USF administrator projected 4Q demand of more than $2 billion for the Lifeline, E-rate subsidies to schools and libraries, rural healthcare and high-cost broadband support programs. If the FCC doesn't act on the OMD's proposal within 14 days of the public notice, it's deemed approved. The Free State Foundation wants the FCC and Congress "to look seriously at further meaningful reforms to increase the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of the USF programs and to increase even further efforts to weed out waste, fraud and abuse," said President Randolph May in a statement Friday. He noted the USF surcharge was 7 percent in 4Q 2001,13 percent in 2010 and 17 percent in 2015.
Virgin Islands Telephone recommendations for network resiliency and redundancy via USF funding include weighting "core network miles more heavily than individual end-user connections" and dealing with such connections based on locations served, not aggregate miles. "Core network miles affect potentially thousands of customers; stormhardening them is more valuable than hardening individual customer lines/connections," said the telco, doing business as Viya, on how to vet participants in a proposed Connect USVI Fund auction. A filing posted Thursday in docket 18-143 reported on meetings with an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and with Wireline Bureau staff. Commissioners are tentatively scheduled to vote Sept. 26 on rules to allocate $950 million for the Uniendo a Puerto Rico Fund and the Connect USVI Fund to help rebuild networks in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after 2017 hurricanes (see 1909040028).
The FCC authorized $112 million over a decade for broadband expansion to nearly 48,000 unserved rural homes and businesses in California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin, the fifth wave of support from last year's USF Connect America Fund Phase II auction, said a public notice Thursday in docket 17-182. CAF II allocates nearly $1.5 billion over 10 years for broadband to 700,000-plus unserved rural homes and businesses (see 1807240062).
House Commerce Committee leaders and staff are working on legislation to help secure telecom networks using "suspect communications components,” as expected (see 1907220053), a committee spokesperson said. House Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., has been pursuing draft legislation to encourage rural carriers to remove equipment from Chinese equipment makers Huawei and ZTE. The bill would “fund the replacement of suspect equipment and further prohibit the use of federal funds to purchase suspect network equipment going forward,” the committee spokesperson emailed Wednesday. The proposal could be used to codify the FCC's proposal to bar use of USF money to purchase from companies posing “a national security threat” (see 1812210032).
The FCC proposes eliminating access arbitrage in a 43-page draft order for docket 18-155 updating the intercarrier compensation regime. Commissioners are scheduled to consider that and four other proposals at the Sept. 26 commissioners' meeting. They are USF funding for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands; auction procedures for the 3.5 MHz band; public notice simplifications for broadcast filings; and direct broadcast satellite licensing rules (see 1909040073).
Leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates' proposals for major broadband funding likely signal a definitive end to hopes for enacting a long-sought infrastructure package before the next election, communications sector officials and lobbyists told us. But focus on the issue is a net positive for the ongoing policy debate, they said. Experts question, though, whether attention to broadband as part of rural-focused campaign platforms will translate into a shift in support among those voters who moved away from Democrats in the 2016 election.