FCC Draft Would Address Blanca Telephone Bid for Relief From USF Payment Demand
An FCC draft item circulated on Blanca Telephone's request for relief from a 2016 Office of Managing Director letter demanding repayment of a USF debt under the Debt Collection Improvement Act, said the agency's circulation list updated Friday. The draft…
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addresses Blanca's petition for reconsideration in docket 96-45, said a commission spokesman Monday. The petition said the FCC in 2008 began auditing Blanca's USF receipts being used in part to support a mobile cellular system in Colorado, but it wasn't until June 2, 2016, that the managing director told the company, "without citing specific rules," that it had violated several "rule parts." The managing director "is not authorized to issue USF rule violation findings," it said. "The Commission is not authorized to issue rule violation findings where it had knowledge of facts for years, but did nothing more than query Blanca relentlessly about its USF accounting practices. The FCC eventually referred the USF accounting questions to the Department of Justice despite the fact that the FCC had not entered any rule violation findings against Blanca at that time. Blanca was not informed of the timing of that referral. In essence, the FCC referred nothing to the DoJ and the June 2, 2016 action is nothing more than a fig leaf to try to correct the deficient referral to try to improve the DoJ’s litigating position."