Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support recipients must notify the FCC Wireline Bureau if they can’t meet the program’s third-year service milestone, said a reminder public notice posted Monday. The milestone requires “building out to at least 40% of each support recipient’s RDOF locations,” the PN said. The bureau must be notified by the carrier’s third-year service milestone deadline, which is Jan. 15 for carriers authorized in 2021 and Jan. 15, 2026, for those authorized in 2022, the PN said. “An RDOF support recipient that does not meet its third-year service milestone shall be subject to quarterly reporting and have its support withheld if warranted in accordance with the Commission’s rules,” the PN said. The bureau announced a host of RDOF defaults last week (see 2411270049).

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau on Wednesday asked for comment in 30 days on a petition for rulemaking by Fine Point Technologies seeking standardized broadband speed testing protocols. “This proposal is aimed at ensuring consistent, reliable, and equitable speed testing for broadband users, regardless of the specific hardware or proprietary technology implemented by individual manufacturers,” said a company filing. “Proprietary testing protocols tied to specific [equipment] manufacturers can create discrepancies that misrepresent actual user experiences, potentially leading to misinformation or unmet expectations,” Fine Point said. Comments should be filed in RM-11991.

The FCC Wireline Bureau approved a waiver for Indiana’s Rural Telephone Corp. (RTC) of the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund milestone and noncompliance rules to permit it to pay early a portion of the required support recovery for defaulting on eligible census blocks within census block groups (CBGs) in its RDOF-funded service area. “Our grant of this limited waiver serves the public interest because we are able to safeguard the public’s funds by recovering support early for CBGs RTC will not serve pursuant to its RDOF obligations,” said an order posted Wednesday in docket 10-90. The waiver also “enables RTC to come into compliance with its RDOF obligations in its remaining CBGs, allowing RTC to continue receiving support, so that RTC can serve consumers with voice and broadband,” the bureau said.

The FCC’s Wireline Bureau in a public notice Wednesday formally announced a host of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund defaults and said the defaulting companies will face RDOF penalties and, for one of them, possible enforcement action. The defaults -- by Mercury Wireless, PVT Networks, Cable One, Sparklight and Fidelity Cablevision -- were previously announced by the companies in letters to the Wireline Bureau, and encompass census block groups (CBGs) in Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and New Mexico, the PN said. Mercury's defaults are being referred to the Enforcement Bureau “for further consideration,” the PN said. Mercury is defaulting on 9,082 model-estimated locations in Indiana out of the 13,529 it agreed to serve, and 55,175 of 77,925 locations in Michigan, the PN said. It also defaulted on all 8,398 locations it agreed to serve in Illinois, all 29 locations in Kansas and all 5,023 locations in Missouri. “We expect carriers to live up to their deployment commitments, and those who fail to meet their obligations can jeopardize the opportunity to bring broadband to the promised areas and undermine the integrity of the programs,” said the PN. “Such defaults are particularly regrettable when the carrier waits years after authorization to default, making it difficult to correct the problem and otherwise accommodate the defaulted areas in other deployment programs.” Many funding programs make areas ineligible for broadband deployment funding where a provider is already under an enforceable commitment to serve, the PN said. Formally announcing the defaults and informing other governmental entities “avoids leaving these areas unserved for the duration of the RDOF deployment terms because providers may now have access to alternative funding to serve these areas,” the PN said. “This was a very difficult decision for Mercury to make, as we continually strive to deploy highspeed broadband throughout rural America,” the company said in a letter Monday informing the FCC about some of the Michigan defaults. “Factors outside of the company’s control, including rising costs and competitive encroachment, have rendered deployment to many RDOF CBGs economically unviable and ultimately unachievable,” it added.

The FCC’s extension for up to six years of its freeze on federal-state jurisdictional separations of telecom costs and revenue for rate-of-return incumbent local exchange carriers (see 2411130043) is now effective, said a notice in Monday’s Federal Register. The FCC referred to the Federal-State Joint Board on Jurisdictional Separations the issue of whether to permanently freeze the rules and whether carriers still using separations should be allowed to unfreeze their category relationship every few years.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau approved conditional waivers for T-Mobile and Hamilton Relay on a rule requiring providers of text telephone-based telecom relay service to offer a service capable of communicating with devices using the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format. In 2022, T-Mobile asked that the FCC initiate a rulemaking eliminating the ASCII reference because it's "an obsolete and infrequently used format,” said an order in Monday’s Daily Digest. Hamilton filed in support, the bureau said. “In these particular circumstances, we find that, given ASCII’s technological obsolescence, the absence of significant demand for it, and the presence of viable alternatives, there is good cause to grant T-Mobile and Hamilton waivers of the requirement to offer TTY-based relay service in ASCII format,” the bureau said.

Fiber deployment could generate about $3.24 trillion "in terms of net present value (NPV) in incremental economic impact," a study released Wednesday by Frontier and the Fiber Broadband Association said. Conducted by the Brattle Group, the study found that deploying fiber to the roughly 56 million unserved households could generate about $1.64 trillion in NPV by increasing home values. Fiber deployment could also increase household income by $1.6 trillion in NPV, the study said. "Fiber is the best technology for connecting homes and businesses," said Frontier CEO Nick Jeffery. FBA CEO Gary Bolton said the study "makes it clear" that government programs "need to prioritize funding for fiber over any other high-speed connections."

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Securus' motion to stay the FCC’s incarcerated people's communications services order, the court ruled Monday. It didn't detail why it ruled against Securus. “Having carefully reviewed the specific arguments Securus offers in favor of a stay, the motion is hereby denied, without prejudice to later revisitation of relevant points in briefing and during merits review,” the court said. Securus had argued that the FCC’s order violates the 2022 Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act and would “irreparably harm Securus if allowed to take effect." The order’s effective date was Tuesday. The FCC order “will increase the likelihood that correctional agencies will reduce communications options in the absence of necessary safety and security services” and “materially inhibit competition in the marketplace.”

Proposals in the submarine cable NPRM on the FCC's Nov. 21 agenda (see 2410310048) could undermine deployment of fiber optic subset cable infrastructure, according to the International Connectivity Coalition. Meeting with the offices of the five FCC commissioners, ICC representatives said U.S. data flows could become more centralized -- and vulnerable -- without continued infrastructure growth and landing site diversification. ICC members urged that the NPRM be aligned to specific national security risks and that there be inquiries into such issues as subset cable resiliency and the importance of trusted suppliers, said a filing posted Monday in docket 24-153.

As its cable landing license application is processed, Trans Americas Fiber (TAF) in the meantime is asking the FCC for special temporary authority to build and test portions of the TAM-1 submarine cable system in U.S. territory. In an application posted Friday, TAF said that without such authority, "connectivity on the TAM-1 system would likely be delayed at significant cost" to it. The 7,010-kilometer TAM-1 would connect Florida, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama.