EchoStar, Dish and Hughes urged the FCC to finish its...
EchoStar, Dish and Hughes urged the FCC to finish its work on the structure of the Connect America Fund before expanding the base of services contributing to the universal service fund. Until that work is complete, it’s difficult for satellite…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
broadband providers “to evaluate whether the new contribution regime is equitable and non-discriminatory as required by statute,” they said in a joint filing in docket 06-122 (http://xrl.us/bnqnsw). The USF contribution mechanism “must be updated to better reflect the marketplace,” the filing said. The CAF, if not structured properly, “could subsidize less-efficient terrestrial technologies to provide service to the same customers that satellite broadband providers are investing their own funds to serve.” It wouldn’t be competitively neutral or equitable to mandate that satellite broadband providers contribute to USF “if they are arbitrarily excluded from receiving support in areas where they are the most-efficient provider, and high-cost funding instead is channeled to subsidize their less-efficient competitors to extend service to areas where satellite service would be more efficient,” the companies added.