Qualifying USF rural healthcare demand of $275 million exceeded available funding of $254 million for the filing window of Sept. 1-Nov. 30, said a Universal Service Administrative Co. release Monday. Recipients will thus receive a pro-rata percentage of 92.5 percent of their qualifying requests. The FCC capped the rural healthcare annual budget at $400 million, and qualified recipients got $133 million in a previous window for funding year 2016 (there is also about $13 million in administrative expenses). The Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition "appreciates the difficult position" USAC faced because "for the first time, demand for RHC program funding" exceeded the cap, said John Windhausen, SHLB executive director, in a statement. "Unfortunately, this will mean that many rural health centers will be forced to pay more to maintain their existing telemedicine connections, and some of these clinics may be forced off the network altogether, which jeopardizes the quality of health care delivered to rural America. This funding crisis points to the need for comprehensive reform of the RHC program, which the SHLB Coalition requested in its Petition for Rulemaking filed in December 2015," he said, citing RHC as the only USF program that "has not been fully reformed."
Citing USF funding issues, 56 senators urged the FCC to "consider any changes" needed to ensure affordable broadband is made available in high-cost rural areas. "We are still hearing frustration about the prices for and the availability of standalone broadband," said a letter Tuesday to commissioners, spearheaded by Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. Millions of rural Americans still don't have affordable stand-alone broadband "due to insufficient USF support," despite 2016 FCC changes, they wrote. "[T]he limited USF budget also reduced the amount of funding available to carriers electing new 'model-based' USF support, resulting in tens of thousands of rural consumers receiving slower broadband speeds than intended by the model or not gaining access to broadband at all. We are concerned that the lack of sufficient resources in the reformed High-Cost mechanism may be undermining the desired effect of the reforms and falling short of the statutory mandate that reasonably comparable services at reasonably comparable rates be available to rural and urban Americans alike." NTCA commended the senators, in a release. “We are deeply grateful to Senators Fischer and Klobuchar, and the many other members of the Senate representing more than half of the chamber, for their leadership in encouraging the FCC to ensure this program continues to be an effective linchpin of our country’s efforts to deploy and sustain advanced, affordable communications in rural communities,” NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said. “This letter demonstrates a consistent and enduring commitment on the part of Congress to make sure that ongoing reforms to the USF are done right.”
The FCC asked a court to resume its review of AT&T and CenturyLink challenges to 2014 and 2015 orders granting ILECs only partial forbearance from telecom regulations that left them subject to unsubsidized USF voice obligations. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Feb. 7 granted an FCC request to hold the case in abeyance while the agency's new leadership considered its course (see 1702070026). "The Commission has now decided to proceed with this litigation. The FCC therefore respectfully moves the Court to remove these cases from abeyance, and to proceed with scheduling argument at the Court’s convenience," said an FCC motion (in Pacer) to the court Friday in AT&T; CenturyLink v. FCC (No. 15-1038).
President Donald Trump’s “bold, broad view of infrastructure” includes broadband, a White House spokesman told us Thursday. The official declined to say whether any broadband funding in Trump’s much-discussed $1 trillion infrastructure plan would be funneled to FCC USF or other programs. The White House previously said it was considering broadband for its infrastructure package (see 1702230059), and bicameral and bipartisan congressional pressure all year pushed the White House to make broadband a priority.
Broadband infrastructure legislation has strong prospects, with the 2018 election conducive to passage, said NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators to be televised soon (here). Recognizing that securing additional rural USF support from the FCC is difficult, she said she remains hopeful and believes broadband infrastructure legislation could help fill the funding need. She said the broadband net neutrality dispute gives lawmakers a hook to pursue a Communications Act rewrite but it's a heavy lift.
FCC staff denied Critical Alert Systems' request to review an audit decision by the Universal Service Administrative Co. that said CAS didn't accurately report certain revenue on its 2009 Form 499-A filing. USAC said CAS didn't provide "sufficient documentation or any other information to support the allocation of its interstate paging revenues for universal service contribution purposes," said a Wireline Bureau order Monday in docket 06-122. CAS, formerly NEP, reported interstate telecom revenue well below a "safe harbor percentage" exempting paging providers from making USF contributions, but a USAC audit determined in 2012 the company didn't provide enough support for its revenue claims, and the bureau upheld that decision. A CAS spokesman said the company recently sold its paging assets to American Messaging Services. We couldn't reach AMS for comment.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced a Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force to spearhead implementation of two planned reverse auctions of USF subsidies that were the subject of orders adopted Feb. 23 (see 1702230019 and 1702230042). The Connect America Fund Phase II (CAF II) auction will offer almost $2 billion in support for fixed broadband providers to connect customers, and the Mobility Fund II (MF-II) auction will offer $4.5 billion to expand 4G LTE mobile coverage -- both over 10 years -- said a commission release Monday. Pai named from within the agency Chelsea Fallon task force director, and Michael Janson and Kirk Burgee deputy directors. Thom Parisi will be chief of staff of the task force, which will draw on senior staffers from across the commission. The FCC is moving "aggressively to close the digital divide" and the task force "will help ensure that taxpayer funds are allocated efficiently for rural broadband deployment and that all Americans who want Internet access are able to get it," said Pai. Beginning the auctions "as soon as possible is a top priority," he added.
Universal Service Administrative Co. in 2016 focused on protecting USF integrity, streamlining and optimizing program operations, supporting stakeholders "through better online tools," and employing data "to improve operational effectiveness," said CEO Chris Henderson in USAC's annual report posted Thursday in FCC docket 96-45. "These initiatives became all the more important with the FCC’s new and ongoing modernization orders for Lifeline, High Cost, and Schools and Libraries. While Rural Health Care didn’t have a formal modernization order from the FCC, 2016 was a transformative year as we implemented changes to accommodate a growth in demand for funds. The ground work we laid to prepare for these program shifts was a stabilizing force in a year of enormous change, and has helped us execute a volume of work unparalleled at USAC."
FCC staff denied requests for review of Universal Service Administrative Co. audit findings of USF contribution filings but remanded the cases to USAC for further consideration of some issues. The findings involve "whether certain revenues associated with specific mixed-use special access lines (also referred to as private lines) should be considered interstate" in assessing USF contributions, said a Wireline Bureau order in docket 96-45 in Friday's Daily Digest. Carrier USF contributions are based on their interstate and international telecom end-user revenue. The review requests were filed by DeltaCom, McLeod USA Telecommunications Services, PacTec Communications, Puerto Rico Telephone, US Link and XO Communications. The facts varied, but each party said USAC misapplied a "ten percent rule" in the audits of their USF contribution filings, the order said. The rule assigns "mixed-use private or WATS" line costs as intrastate if 10 percent or less of a line's total traffic is interstate. "USAC appropriately relied on the ten percent rule to determine the jurisdictional nature of the revenues," the bureau wrote. "USAC may have failed to consider other relevant evidence that particular private lines were properly classified as intrastate. We therefore remand the requests for review to USAC for further consideration consistent with this Order."
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn lauded an FCC broadband health mapping platform as "a monumental step" that's building knowledge and awareness about the importance of advanced health services. Calling it "simply unacceptable" that 34 million Americans lack access to 25 Mbps connectivity and others can't afford it, she said the initiative is helping identify areas with "critical need" for broadband health solutions. "It is designed to assist those committed to closing infrastructure gaps, to ensure that everyone has access to the technology necessary, and enable quick and top-rated health care assistance," she said, according to prepared remarks Thursday at a state telehealth summit in Columbia, South Carolina: The interactive tool "will enable those in both the public and private sectors to access and analyze statistics about broadband connectivity, as well as health and other indexes on a national, state, and county level." Clyburn said the tool overlays broadband data with key health information down to the county level. "Using this data, the FCC also has been able to identify, what we call the 100 'critical need' counties, meaning those communities with limited broadband access and very high health needs," she said, noting the initiative was launched by a Connect2Health task force in August (see 1608020017). She said requests for the USF Healthcare Connect Fund, which has an annual budget of $400 million, "reached a historic high of nearly $378 million" in funding year 2015, the most recent available.