The FCC would use two reverse auctions to distribute $20.4 billion in funding over the next decade through a Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) that Chairman Ajit Pai announced at the White House in April (see 1904120008), per a draft NPRM released Thursday. The new USF program (in docket 19-126) would help deliver broadband service tiers of at least 25/3 Mbps to rural communities unserved and underserved. The draft circulated Wednesday; commissioners will vote on it at their Aug. 1 meeting (see 1907100072).
Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin led a letter with House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and 12 other House Democrats Tuesday to the FCC raising concerns with the NPRM to establish new budget caps on the USF (see 1905310069). The agency has extended the comment deadline to July 29, with replies to Aug. 26 (see 1907050023). Others signing on: Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, Cindy Axne of Iowa, Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Cheri Bustos of Illinois, G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, T.J. Cox of California, Angie Craig of Minnesota, Ro Khanna of California, Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Peter Welch of Vermont. They urged Chairman Ajit Pai and the other commissioners “not to establish an overall [USF] cap … or combine the cap of any USF programs, consistent with” the House's voice vote last month to approve Pocan's amendment to the FY 2020 budget bill containing funding for the FCC and FTC (HR-3351) that would prohibit the FCC from instituting an overall USF budget cap (see 1906260081). “Imposing an overall cap on the USF would unnecessarily cut funding” to the programs, the lawmakers said. “As you acknowledge” in the NPRM “the programs currently operate with caps or targeted budgets.” The agency is reviewing the letter, a spokesperson said Wednesday.
A 4-1 NPRM would make permanent a five-year budget approach to funding internal connections (including Wi-Fi) for schools and libraries under the USF E-rate program, the FCC said on docket 13-184 Tuesday. It follows a five-year test period due to expire this year (see 1906190019) that replaced a previous approach granting funds to individual schools and libraries two out of five years. The FCC will consider whether to move to a school-districtwide budget application process and a similar library-systemwide one, and how to address logistical challenges if it does. The agency wants comment on whether it needs to find a new way to calculate funding for small, rural schools and libraries. In a statement of partial dissent, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said he "cannot endorse maintaining elements that I have always considered problematic, including the flatly absurd idea" to allocate libraries' E-rate support on a per square foot basis. O'Rielly, partially dissenting, hopes "our next action with respect to E-Rate will be laser-focused on eradicating USF-funded overbuilding" that use Category 1 E-rate funds. Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks issued statements endorsing the NPRM (see 1907080068). "In this rulemaking, the agency seeks to sustain and extend the impact of these Wi-Fi policies for future generations of students and library patrons," Rosenworcel said. Starks doesn't support reverting to the prior funding approach because "the lack of certainty of funding under the prior methodology discouraged schools and libraries from applying for funding for Wi-Fi networks." Comments are due 30 days after Federal Register publication, replies 15 days later. The NPRM was adopted June 28.
Requiring Lifeline providers to use a federal database to check if consumers are eligible for government-subsidized, carrier-provided phone and broadband services is causing more concerns from states, as they lose the ability to run their own checks. NARUC members will vote at their July 21- 24 meeting on asking the FCC to halt activation of the national verifier (NV) in any more states this year, and separately on recommending the agency not cap the overall USF. NV rollout prompted concerns subscribers are being dropped from carriers' customer rolls over difficultly verifying eligibility even though they may indeed be eligible (see 1907080009).
Missouri’s USF fund balance won't become negative until May 2043 if the Public Service Commission keeps the current assessment level of 0.001 percent of intrastate revenue, staff said Monday in case TO-2019-0346. Suspending assessment, as proposed by the commission (see 1906050035), would make the fund balance negative by March 2023, while a 0.0005 rate would do it by July 2025 and a 0.0075 rate would mean November 2028, staff said. All projections include staff's recommendation to increase the discount to $24 monthly for subscribers to the disabled program, from $15.75, and to $14.75 for Lifeline subscribers from $6.50.
Quintillion Subsea Operations asked the FCC to revise the competitive bidding process for its rural healthcare and E-rate programs to give competitive carriers more opportunity to receive funds to provide broadband to schools, libraries and hospitals in Alaska, it said in docket 17-310 posted Tuesday. Executives met last week with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, Wireline Deputy Bureau Chief Trent Harkrader and other Wireline officials to share analysis that showed a single carrier receives 75 percent of the funding in Alaska from the two USF programs. Quintillion proposes the FCC extend the review period of service providers from 28 to 90 days, or at least 60 days, to "allow all service providers appropriate time to evaluate and design cost-effective solutions to service requests."
The deadline to comment on an NPRM to establish new budget caps on the USF is extended by two weeks to July 29, replies Aug. 26, said an FCC Wireline Bureau order Friday in docket 06-122. Dozens of groups asked the agency last month to extend the comment period to Sept. 30, replies to Oct. 30, to allow time for rural schools to participate. The groups, led by the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition and the National Consumer Law Center, supported an earlier request by the Education and Library Networks Coalition to "extend the comment period for this matter until at least the end of September 2019 to provide ample time for the Commission to hear the opinions of a major constituency of the E-rate program" because in mid-summer, "most school E-rate beneficiaries will not be able to inform the Commission's decisions on creating an overall universal service cap and possibly combining E-Rate and Rural Health Care program under a single cap." SHLB is "grateful that the Commission has extended the comment deadline, as every little bit helps," a spokesperson for SHLB emailed Friday. Advocacy groups and Democratic commissioners have raised concerns about the proposed budget caps, claiming they could pit the interests of schools and libraries against those of rural health facilities (see 1906030059).
Chairman Ajit Pai is “optimistic” the FCC “will have results to show” on the C band in the fall, he told a 5G workshop at the Congreso Latinoamericano De Telecomunicaciones Thursday. Last week, the agency got more comments on the C band (see 1907050035). The FCC also continues its work on making the 3.1-3.55 GHz band available for commercial use. Pai defended a draft order on the educational broadband service band, set for a vote Wednesday (see 1907050034). EBS rules “date back decades,” Pai said: “At that time, it was envisioned that this spectrum would be used for educational TV. But today, this band is dramatically underused, with much of this spectrum lying fallow. That’s unacceptable.” Pai also stressed the importance of 5G security. “5G will affect our militaries, our industries, our critical infrastructure, and much more,” he said: “The procurement and deployment decisions made now will have a generational impact on our security, economy, and society.” The world can’t make “risky choices and just hope for the best,” he said: “We must see clearly the threats to the security of our networks and act to address them. And the more that the United States and our regional allies can work together and make security decisions based on shared principles, the safer that our 5G networks will be.” Pai said he strongly supports the principles approved in May by the Prague 5G Security Conference (see 1905030052). In another speech at a universal service workshop at the congress, Pai said the FCC is rejiggering the USF program to make it more effective through reverse auctions. Pai said he has seen firsthand how well that approach works. An auction last year provided $1.5 billion to connect more than 713,000 unserved homes and businesses nationwide, saving $3.5 billion from estimated costs of those connections, he said. “Later this year, we will start the process of setting up a $20.4 billion broadband expansion program called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund,” Pai said: “Applying lessons learned from the recent reverse auction, this program will spur the deployment of high-speed broadband networks across more of rural America over the next decade.” Other work continues, he said: “We’ve increased subsidies for small, rural carriers, while giving them more aggressive buildout requirements. We’ve increased the budget for our rural healthcare program and are designing a connected care pilot program to realize the potential of telehealth solutions outside the hospital.” Commissioners will also vote Wednesday on an NPRM for a three-year, $100 million USF telehealth pilot program (see 1906180053).
Sandwich Isles Communications won't get a rehearing with the full court (see 1906030035) to appeal its case against the FCC regarding fines the agency said stemmed from improper USF payments it received between 2002 and 2015 (see 1903280036), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered (in Pacer) in docket 19-1056 Wednesday. The three judges who heard the case also won't rehear it. SIC didn't immediately comment.
Consolidated Communications Networks spoke with FCC Wireline Bureau staff on what it could provide the FCC to bolster a petition, so it "can be granted expeditiously," a consultant reported. JSI noted the rural broadband experiment participating telco seeks waiver from certifying that it built out all locations derived from the Connect America model to not keep open an irrevocable letter of credit. Consolidated gets such money for 171 North Dakota extremely high-cost locations where it's "confident" it deployed broadband to all locations in funded census blocks. It "could only find a total of 162 locations after extensive searching in the sparsely populated census blocks" and there's "no mechanism ... for dealing with location discrepancies," said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 10-90. The company fears "it will face penalties for not certifying a completed buildout to 171 locations at the end of the funding period." This telco is separate from the bigger and better-known Northeast U.S. phone-services provider Consolidated Communications Holdings, JSI and Consolidated Communications Holdings representatives emailed us. JSI is that bigger company's USF consultant.