Commenters urged the FCC to correct “obvious” errors...
Commenters urged the FCC to correct “obvious” errors with the Alaskan capital expenditure coefficient in the agency’s quantile regression model, in comments filed Monday. The Matanuska Telephone Association asked the commission in May to strike the use of the negative…
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coefficient. “It is not clear why the Quantile Regression Model yielded a negative coefficient for Alaska, but the stark reality is that it is more expensive to build network in Alaska than in the Lower 48, not less,” General Communication Inc. said (http://bit.ly/15hiFGZ). GCI urged the commission to grant the petition. In so doing, the agency “should not be under any illusion” that this would address “even a significant minority” of the shortcomings of the USF reform rules with respect to Alaska, said the company. Several factors, including unique geography and topography, low population density and harsh climate, contribute to the high costs faced by Alaskan carriers, said the Arctic Slope Telephone Association Cooperative and Copper Valley Telephone Cooperative (http://bit.ly/15hj9Nv). “While we understand that the WCB staff is working to produce a new result for 2014, it is not acceptable to penalize Alaska carriers during the entirety of 2013 while these data errors are being corrected.” If the quantile regression analysis is to be used at all, said NTCA, the commission must “redouble efforts” to ensure that “its inputs are accurate and its outcomes promote the provision of specific, sufficient and predictable high-cost support” (http://bit.ly/10uMZ4T). The negative coefficient for Alaska is a “clear error,” but other erroneous outcomes based on faulty data “may not be as immediately clear,” said the association. It urged the commission to scrub and scrutinize its inputs. The Alaskan costs were also the topic of a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday. (See related report above in this issue.)