No Easy Answers on Mobility Fund, CAF, Says AT&T's Marsh

calls will need to be made, said Joan Marsh, AT&T senior vice president-federal regulatory, Tuesday in a blog post. On MFII “as we understand it, the FCC has smartly pivoted toward assessing required LTE coverage based on geography, ensuring that winning bidders cover not only population centers, but also the various locations where community members work, farm, visit family and friends, and the points in between,” Marsh said. AT&T’s preliminary budget estimate is that available dollars will support an LTE build to only 70-80 percent of eligible areas, she said. The current proposal “would require winning providers to cover an average of 90 percent of the geography that the provider wins in a state, with no individual census tract falling below 75 percent coverage,” Marsh wrote. “While such a coverage requirement is certainly laudable, it will come with a significant price tag and will likely push bidders away from census tracks with extremely sparse populations or tough topography.” Changes to CAF pose similar challenges, Marsh said. “In the CAF II item, the FCC also will need to decide how to weigh bids for varying service levels, from a basic service of 10 Mbps/down to Cadillac services with gigabit download speeds,” she said. “The current proposal skews toward favoring fiber-fed services that will deliver gigabit speeds. Again, we do not fault the FCC for wanting to deliver gigabit speeds to rural communities. But setting weights that favor 1 Gig deployments will leave more than half of eligible consumers untouched by CAF II support and with little hope of being served in the future.” Commissioners vote on both issues Thursday.