NTTA Offers New Details on Proposals for Boosting Tribal Broadband Service
The National Tribal Telecommunications Association gave the FCC more details on two proposals to promote tribal broadband deployment. NTTA has asked the FCC to waive or modify an operations-expense limitation for rural carriers that predominantly serve tribal locations, and adopt…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
a tribal broadband factor that provides more USF support to carriers serving tribal lands. Fourteen carriers would qualify for the opex relief if a predominantly tribal carrier is defined as having more than 75 percent of its served locations on tribal lands, and 19 carriers would be eligible if the FCC required only a majority of locations to be on tribal lands, said an NTTA filing Friday in docket 10-90 that cited analysis Alexicon did for the group. It said the impact on the overall distribution of high-cost rate-of-return USF support would be "negligible," though the impact on the affected carriers would be "significant," allowing them to deploy and maintain their broadband infrastructure. NTTA said 112 carriers would be eligible for a tribal broadband factor (TBF), but it expected the number that would elect to receive the extra support would be lower, given the "very small number" of tribal locations that many serve along with proposed buildout duties and reporting requirements. The filing offered further details on NTTA's proposals, including to cap the tribal broadband factor at $25 million annually, and establish a buildout schedule that would require deployment to at least 50 percent of TBF-targeted locations within five years, increasing by 10 percentage points a year until achieving 100 percent deployment in year 10. Chairman Tom Wheeler said the FCC would deal with tribal broadband issues "by the end of football season" (see 1609150058).