TracFone Warns of Lifeline 'Death Spiral' if FCC Won't Curb Minimum Standard Hike
Instituting new Lifeline broadband minimum service standards Dec. 1 and reducing support for voice "will not only undermine the commission's primary purpose in establishing the minimum service standards -- to increase broadband access -- but will threaten the program's very…
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existence," TracFone told the FCC, posted Wednesday in docket 11-42. The changes restricting low-income consumers' access to Lifeline and undermining the program's affordability would be so severe it would "set into motion a death spiral" for the program, it said. The company proposed partial grant of an earlier joint petition to delay the new standards (see 1906280012). The FCC should enforce a monthly broadband data allowance of 3 GB on Dec. 1 instead of 8.75 GB, TracFone said, expedite by one year its Lifeline market report to June, and freeze the new Dec. 1 standards until the report's evaluated. The Wireline Bureau should study how increases in data allowances beyond the current 2 GB requirement affect the market, it said. TracFone also wants the FCC to consider keeping the current subsidy for voice. In a Thursday filing, the National Lifeline Association and Q Link Wireless said "phasing out support for voice services endangers public safety," and "there is no support for the voice phase-out in the record."