The House Small Business Subcommittee on Health and Technology dug into questions of rural broadband deployment Thursday at a field hearing in New York and found grave accuracy problems with broadband mapping, its head lawmaker told us. The hearing was at the Orleans County Legislature in Albion, N.Y. Written testimony released Thursday and interviews revealed plenty of scrutiny about what government problems participants believe may impede industry from deploying broadband infrastructure.
Halfway through a daylong FCC rural broadband workshop Wednesday, an audience member stepped up to the mic and asked how much money is available for the rural broadband “experiments,” and how many of the nearly 1,000 expressions of interest received will be granted. “Nothing has been decided,” responded Carol Mattey, deputy Wireline Bureau chief. How best to dole out its limited universal service money is the challenge for FCC officials, who made it clear they are seeking answers.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will recommend raising the USF contribution rate and sending more money to schools and libraries, if that’s necessary, he told a meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington Monday. “I will recommend this to my colleagues if warranted,” Wheeler said, according to prepared remarks (http://fcc.us/1qMDLLo) for the event, which was not open to the public. “But my colleagues and I can’t just pour more money into the program as it presently stands,” he said. “The first step in expansion is introspection."
Two Senate Republicans want the FCC to move forward on the USF’s $100 million Remote Areas Fund. Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire wrote a letter, dated Thursday, to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, saying: “If implemented correctly, RAF could potentially provide the most rural areas of the country, including the most rural parts of New Hampshire and Missouri, with access to advanced broadband services” (http://1.usa.gov/1fAJvU9). “We are encouraged that the Commission’s recent IP transitions item included a commitment to address the challenges of providing service to the most remote, unserved areas of the country by the end of 2014,” wrote Ayotte and Blunt. “Please provide us an update as to how the Commission plans to implement the $100 million annual RAF portion within the Universal Service Fund this year."
The proposed USF contribution factor for the second quarter of 2014 will be 16.6 percent, the FCC Office of Managing Director said in a public notice Wednesday (http://bit.ly/On0Zsp). That’s slightly up from the first quarter factor of 16.4 percent. It’s also more than a full percentage point higher than the 2013 second quarter contribution factor of 15.5 percent. But it’s down from a 2012 second quarter factor of 17.4 percent. The proposed contribution factor will automatically take effect within 14 days unless the FCC takes action to intervene, the notice said. Carriers may not recover through a federal universal service line-item an amount that exceeds 16.6 percent of the interstate telecom charges on a customer’s bill, the notice said.
The FCC should consider “immediately” referring several issues to the appropriate federal-state Joint Board, NARUC told an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler Friday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1cuZqUi). USF contribution reform and a replacement model for implementation of Connect America Phase II should be sent to the joint board, NARUC said. The FCC’s “reluctance, through multiple administrations,” to classify VoIP service as either a telecom service or “something else,” has caused “significant costs to industry and rate payers,” NARUC said.
The Telecommunications Industry Association underscored the necessity of passing the FCC Process Reform Act (HR-3675) into law, and praised the House for its scheduled floor vote Tuesday.
Future FCC broadband progress reports are likely to continue to find it’s not being deployed on a reasonable or timely basis, regardless of actual levels of deployment of advanced telecom services, said industry observers in interviews this week. Most legal scholars we spoke to agree Verizon v. FCC (CD Jan 16 p1) gave the agency authority over broadband under Communications Act Section 706(a). That’s a big change from a common earlier read that a negative deployment finding under 706(b) was required to trigger the agency’s broadband authority. But the newfound independent 706(a) authority is unlikely to free the agency to find in 706(b) reports that broadband is being timely deployed, observers say.
Amid debates in states nationwide over deregulating the telecom industry, competing bills in Minnesota would take two very different tacks. One, proposed by the Minnesota Telecom Alliance (MTA), would limit the state’s regulatory authority for residential customers to those with a single traditional phone line, a move the state’s AARP said at a state legislative hearing Wednesday would “eliminate any meaningful oversight of the telecommunications industry in Minnesota.” Another bill, proposed by the Minnesota Department of Commerce, would add more regulations on rural call completion. NARUC and other organizations said they did not know of any states that have passed similar measures. Some observers said other legislation addressing rural call completion may follow.
The White House’s proposed budget for fiscal-year 2015 would include $375.38 million for the FCC and include provisions changing the USF program, create resources for “mission-critical systems to ensure that they are operational during a Continuity of Operations (COOP) event,” make a Do-Not-Call registry for phone numbers that public safety answering points use, get new equipment for the Enforcement Bureau and back information technology upgrades for the whole FCC, according to a document posted by the FCC (http://fcc.us/1hNuRs2). It would ask for spectrum license user fees, which NAB and CTIA object to. “The Administration proposes to direct that the FCC use either auction or fee authority to repurpose spectrum frequencies between 1675-1680 megahertz for wireless broadband use by 2017, subject to sharing arrangements with Federal weather satellites,” the budget document said. “Currently, the spectrum is being used for radiosondes (weather balloons). A new weather satellite that is scheduled for launch in 2015 will operate in adjacent frequencies. If this proposal is enacted, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would move the radiosondes to another frequency, allowing the spectrum to be repurposed for commercial use with limited protection zones for the remaining weather satellite downlinks.” The spectrum probably wouldn’t be repurposed for commercial use without this proposal, which would raise $230 million over 10 years, the budget said. The budget would include $1 million for upgrading FCC Form 477, to “drive an evolution of the national broadband map to further improve its utility as a key resource of broadband deployment for consumers, policymakers, researchers, economists, and others,” it said. The FCC would get $10.88 million to revamp USF. “More resources are required to continue the Commission’s work to modernize USF, implement reforms, increase its oversight of the newly-reformed programs and provide for critical enforcement of the rules,” the budget said. “This request will support funding for additional staff including, attorneys, economists, IT specialists, program managers, and technologists.” Congress must approve a budget.