2020 Democratic presidential hopeful and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg backed telehealth investment improvements as part of a rural healthcare policy platform. Buttigieg urged doubling annual funding for the FCC's USF Rural Health Care Program to $1 billion. The platform also proposed to “massively expand” broadband coverage across the U.S. and “expand the types of care settings that can receive reimbursement for telehealth services.” Release of Buttigieg's plan Friday was two days after a trio of other 2020 Democratic hopefuls -- Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts -- issued competing rural-focused policy platforms that propose major investments in broadband deployments (see 1908070070). Much of the tech-focused debate during the 2020 campaign until last week was on the antitrust implications of the growth of major tech companies, including Warren's proposal to break up big tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon (see 1904170046 and 1906270010).

The FCC Wireless Bureau said it’s consolidating Dish Network requests for extra time to build out various spectrum licenses with T-Mobile and Sprint requests for approval of their deal. Last month, Dish sought extensions for AWS 4, lower 700 MHz E-block and AWS H-block licenses, the bureau said Thursday: “With those requests, DISH expressed a willingness to accept a number of conditions that would generally require it to construct a nationwide 5G broadband network, subject to making significant financial payments if it fails do so.” All are consolidated under docket 18-197. The FCC said attorneys general in two more states, Indiana and Texas, sought access to numbering resource utilization and forecast reports filed by carriers and disaggregated, carrier-specific local number portability data as they scrutinize the deal. "The Commission is providing this notice to inform carriers of the requests … to allow carriers the opportunity to contact those Offices of Attorney General or to take any other action they may deem appropriate if they have concerns or oppose disclosure,” said a separate Thursday notice.

The Wireless ISP Association wants shared, not unlicensed, use of the C band (see 1908070032).

To help close the digital divide, the FCC needs a robust verification system for its broadband maps that relies less on broadband providers' self-reported data, Public Knowledge said in a letter posted in docket 19-195 Thursday. "The FCC's faulty data collection process has led to the production of broadband maps that overstate broadband availability in many parts of the U.S.," the group said, leaving unserved communities "on the wrong side of the digital divide." Public Knowledge wants ISPs to take more responsibility for the mapping data they provide. "Carriers that overstate deployment risk disqualifying truly unserved areas from receiving universal support," it said. "Carriers should have some skin in the game if they overstate coverage." It suggested the FCC consider crowdsourcing and other challenge systems to check the accuracy of the service availability and performance data that providers report (see 1908070009). "To incentivize participation and offset costs, these verification mechanisms should require providers that have overstated coverage data to reimburse expenses for those who successfully challenge inaccurate carrier data submissions," it said. Public Knowledge said it supports FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks' idea "of using more advanced data validation algorithms to help catch error data."

Current RF limits for devices licensed by the FCC are safe and don’t need to be strengthened, the agency announced Thursday after years of study and in consultation with public health experts in the federal government. In March 2013, the FCC released a Further NPRM asking about the commission’s RF exposure limits and policies. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is circulating for a vote a resolution of the inquiry from 2013, an order addressing the 2013 FNPRM, an NPRM seeking comment on how to determine compliance with the RF standard for high-frequency devices, and an order dealing with a few issues on which parties sought reconsideration, a senior official said. The Pai proposal would “establish a uniform set of guidelines for ensuring compliance with the limits regardless of the service or technology, replacing the Commission’s current inconsistent patchwork of service-specific rules,” said a news release. The FCC sets RF levels in consultation with the FDA and other agencies, said Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology. “After a thorough review of the record and consultation with these agencies, we find it appropriate to maintain the existing radiofrequency limits, which are among the most stringent in the world for cell phones,” Knapp said. “We are pleased that the FCC continues to follow the guidance of expert scientific organizations and health agencies such as the FDA when it comes to RF and health,” a CTIA spokesperson said: “The scientific consensus is that there are no known health risks from all forms of RF energy at the low levels approved for every day consumer use.” The FCC needs to “bring those proceedings to a close,” emailed Joe Van Eaton, municipal lawyer at Best Best. His clients "have been asking the commission to do so for some time. We’ll wait and see whether the commission’s decision does that, and whether it is justified or not, and whether it is based on the latest data.” The issues go beyond exposure limits, he said: “We know that the small cells being placed in rights of way and on rooftops do have emissions that exceed the FCC limits within a certain distance of the antenna.”

AT&T is trying to use an adjudicatory proceeding to get around joint negotiations, and wasting the FCC's time, with its good-faith rules violation complaint against nine station groups (see 1906190027), the defendants said in a heavily redacted docket 19-168 answer Wednesday. The station groups said if they were violating the good-faith obligation in the renegotiated retransmission consent agreements, AT&T should have brought the complaint after the sides went through the same process in 2016. They said the allegation that Sinclair controls or operates all of them is baseless and designed to get publicity for the complaint. And they said the compliant shows the station groups negotiated with AT&T and its DirecTV. AT&T didn't comment. The station group defendants are Deerfield Media, GoCom Media, Howard Stirk Holdings, Mercury Broadcasting, MPS Media, KMTR, Nashville License Holdings, Second Generation of Iowa and Waitt Broadcasting.

NAB told the FCC it should move forward on the C band and not wait for more "ill-conceived" proposals on how to reallocate the spectrum for 5G. The FCC can make no more than 200 MHz available without raising interference concerns, said a filing Wednesday in docket 18-122. “If the Commission caves to unreasonable and unjustified pressure to reallocate more spectrum in the C-band for terrestrial wireless services, it will no doubt be harming the backbone of our nation’s audio and video content delivery system,” NAB said: “Further delay in reallocating 200 MHz of spectrum will give oxygen to ill-conceived, self-interested schemes that are out of touch with reality.” The FCC shouldn’t force broadcasters to rely on fiber as an alternative to C-band spectrum, as proposed by a coalition led by America’s Communications Association (see 1907150010), NAB said. ACA didn’t comment on the NAB arguments. But ACA said in a filing posted Wednesday it spoke with Aaron Goldberger, aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, about its plan. Coalition members had conversations “with most of the MVPD programmers that use the C-band for delivery of video programming and have participated in the proceeding, and that it has a few more scheduled this week,” ACA said: “Within weeks, ACA Connects will be supplementing its original proposal. The additional material will further detail how the fiber network would be designed, established, launched, maintained, and paid for, particularly the part of the network that connects programmers to data centers.” China is "spending tens of billions of dollars to deploy high-capacity fiber-optic and advanced wireless infrastructure in order to win the race to 5G,” emailed ACA Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman. “To compete, the United States must do the same. The 5G Plus Plan is the only proposal before the Commission that clears at least 370 MHz on a nationwide basis and builds out more than 100,000 miles of fiber to small markets and rural areas. It’s hands down the best solution in the record.” ACA understands broadcasters want to remain in the band and can under the plan, he said: “It now seems broadcasters want to tell small cable operators to stay on the band too.”

Beyond just new deployments, fixed broadband providers also have to report upgrades or discontinuances of existing offerings or the sale of existing broadband-capable network facilities within six months, said the final broadband mapping order adopted last week by the FCC (see 1908010007) and released Tuesday. But that language wasn't in the draft, according to our analysis. The draft order said the agency would leave Form 477 in place, subject to some modifications, but the final order elaborates on that, with the agency saying its deployment data will still be "a useful reference point." The Second Further NPRM adopted with the Digital Opportunity Data Collection order also elaborates on questions to be asked about fixed wired deployment reporting. The final order adds a question about measures and methods for ensuring data interoperability and needing the least amount of post processing. It also asks whether providers should be sanctioned for submitting inaccurate data without clear evidence the provider intentionally did so, and how to handle situations in which the filer is unintentionally negligent in submitting inaccurate data. The adopted NPRM adds questions about digital opportunity maps and datasets being used for other universal service programs such as E-rate and Rural Health Care. On crowdsourced data, the NPRM now asks about the appropriate time period "if any" for fixed providers to respond to a complaint. The adopted NPRM also raises the idea of the FCC establishing standards and processes for resolving disputes between providers and stakeholders about whether service actually is available at a given location. The notice also suggests possible enforcement actions for pervasive reporting errors, bad faith or refusal to refile a coverage polygon found to contain inaccurate information. It adds questions about whether creating a location-based database should be done in parallel with establishing an online portal for the FCC's polygon-based approach, and whether fixed providers not accepting universal service support shouldn't have to disclose individual location information since that could be considered competitively sensitive. It also asks about how best to assign prepaid and reseller subscribers to a particular census tract.

Nebraska cable ISP Great Plains Communications closed on its acquisition of InterCarrier Networks (ICN), a fiber network carrier operating in Illinois, Indiana, the St. Louis metro area, and Kentucky, Great Plains said Tuesday. Great Plains said the deal will let it extend its market along those ICN routes and give it opportunity in Kentucky markets. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

The FCC was right to shed a census block-centric approach to measuring broadband deployment, but its new mapping approach adopted last week (see 1908010007) won't mean much for most of rural America, CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson blogged Monday. He said the rural broadband gap comes largely from big telcos' neglected copper networks. He said the inherent challenges in accurately mapping DSL and fixed wireless technologies means the new maps "are still going to be terrible in the places we most care about." He said the FCC's reliance on those maps for decisions like awarding grant money will still hurt rural America. Rather than caring about mapping, the U.S. needs to focus on policies like grants to replace copper with fiber. "We don't need a map to know that is good policy," he said.