Senate Indian Affairs Committee Chairman John Barrasso, R-Wyo., warned witnesses “it’s somewhat troubling that quite a bit of money has been spent on this national goal [of broadband connectivity], and Indian tribal governments and communities still struggle to access Internet services.” He spoke during a late Wednesday hearing addressing a GAO report on telecom access on tribal lands (see 1604270065).
Barriers remain to high-speed Internet access among 21 tribes interviewed, including high poverty rates and high costs to connecting remote tribal villages, GAO said in congressional testimony Wednesday that grew out of a January report. The GAO said FCC USF subsidy programs and the grant programs of the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service "are interrelated," but the agencies "do not coordinate to develop joint outreach and training, which could result in inefficient use of federal resources and missed opportunities for resource leveraging." The FCC hasn't developed performance goals and measures for improving tribal broadband availability, said GAO, which suggested the commission "could establish baseline measures to track its progress by using, for example, the National Broadband Map," which has data on tribal Internet availability. "The FCC also lacks both reliable data on high-speed Internet access and performance goals and measures for high-speed Internet access by tribal institutions -- such as schools and libraries," the GAO said, saying the commission "has neither defined 'tribal' on its E-rate application nor set any performance goals for the program's impact on tribal institutions." Without such goals and measures, the FCC can't assess the impact of its efforts, it said. The FCC agreed with the recommendations, the GAO said.
The FCC issued the 224-page text of its Lifeline modernization order and commissioner statements Wednesday. The item was adopted 3-2 March 31 after an attempted bipartisan budget deal collapsed (see 1603310056). The order extends Lifeline low-income USF support to broadband service and updates program administration. It creates minimum service standards for broadband and mobile voice services while allowing "an exception in areas where fixed broadband providers do not meet the minimum standards." The FCC mandated a "five-and-one-half-year transition, during which we will gradually increase mobile voice and data requirements and gradually decrease voice support levels." It shifts responsibility for verifying consumer Lifeline eligibility from carriers to a national entity, creates a streamlined national Lifeline broadband provider designation process and requires participating providers to make Wi-Fi functionality available when providing devices for Lifeline use. The FCC established a $2.25 billion annual Lifeline budget that can be adjusted if spending reaches 90 percent of that level. Democratic commissioners issued their statements March 31 but the full statements of the dissenting Republicans weren't available until Wednesday's order. "I cannot support this Order," said Commissioner Ajit Pai in a 16-page statement. "It is not fiscally responsible. It does not clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse. And it consigns Lifeline consumers to second-class broadband services for the foreseeable future. On top of this, the Order does not comply with federal law." Pai said that the agency did "practically nothing" to fix Lifeline's "fiscal nightmare." He said the order didn't set a "meaningful," enforceable budget, doesn't target funding to households lacking broadband, doesn't curb excessive spending on urban tribal lands and doesn't address loopholes that invite carrier abuse, but does "cut state commissions out of the Lifeline designation process." He said Chairman Tom Wheeler worked to unwind a budget compromise between Pai and Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Mignon Clyburn. O'Rielly said the most disappointing aspect was that the budget deal was "attacked for all the wrong reasons." The compromise budget "would not have harmed the program or recipients" but instead would have allowed support to reach "all eligible households that lack sufficient broadband while staying within reasonable fiscal limits," he said, noting he would have backed a $2 billion cap. Instead, the order adopted a "phony" budget mechanism, he said.
The Senate Commerce Committee cleared the FCC Reauthorization Act (S-2644) by unanimous voice vote and the FCC Process Reform Act (S-421) by a partisan 13-11 vote Wednesday, as expected (see 1604260058). Senators agreed unanimously to 18 amendments in addition to the substitute amendment from Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., the bill author. The text now includes the Kari’s Law Act (S-2553) and the Spoofing Prevention Act (S-2558).
The FCC Wireline Bureau denied requests by scores of school districts for waivers of an invoice filing deadline under the E-rate USF program. "The rules allow billed entities and service providers to seek and automatically receive a one-time extension of the invoicing deadlines, provided that the extension request is made in advance of the initial invoicing deadline," said a bureau order listed in Tuesday's Daily Digest in docket 02-6. "None of the petitioners timely sought such an extension, and none present evidence that would justify waiving the requirement that invoice extension requests be filed before the invoicing deadline." Many petitioners cited "employee confusion, lack of understanding of the program rules, staff turnover, or no reason at all for not timely seeking an extension," it said, saying such reasons don't constitute "extraordinary circumstances."
An FCC draft order would address an application for review of a Wireline Bureau decision that denied a U.S. Cellular request for a waiver of a 2008 high-cost USF support filing deadline, said an agency spokesman Monday. He didn't say what action the draft order would take but noted the docket is 08-71. The FCC's list of items on circulation, which was updated Friday, indicated the draft order circulated among commissioners Tuesday. U.S. Cellular representatives didn't comment.
General Communications (GCI) proposed revised LTE performance commitments to go along with the Alaska Plan that it and others are urging the FCC to adopt for wireless and rate-of-return wireline carrier broadband USF support in the state. While some aspects remain preliminary and subject to refinement, the proposals reflect "a commitment to move all fiber-backhaul areas, and the substantial majority of microwave-backhaul population, to LTE within ten years," GCI said in a filing Wednesday in docket 10-90. "Moreover, GCI will be implementing LTE-over-satellite to approximately half of the population served by satellite backhaul, and will be moving at least 3,000 POPs from satellite backhaul to microwave." GCI is targeting 2 Mbps downlink speeds and 800 kbps uplink speeds for the vast majority of LTE-served POPs. It urged the FCC to adopt the Alaska Plan rules and approve carrier performance plans in the same order "if at all possible." The filing also answered FCC staff questions about GCI's methodology for determining which Alaska census blocks are "served" by AT&T or Verizon LTE systems and which wouldn't be eligible for future support. Alaska Communications, the state's price-cap telco, recently objected to the Alaska Telephone Association's wireless USF proposal, saying it would provide $1 billion over 10 years to competitors, much of it a "windfall" underwriting "GCI's unregulated middle-mile monopoly" (see 1604190012).
A magistrate judge recommended against dismissing Charter’s challenge of a Minnesota Public Utilities Commission order asserting state authority over interconnected VoIP services. The report and recommendation (in Pacer) by U.S. Magistrate Judge Hildy Bowbeer isn't an order or judgment, and parties may object to the recommendation within 14 days. The U.S. District Court in Minnesota can issue an order 14 days after objections and responses are filed.
Facebook spent $2.78 million on lobbying spending in Q1, about 14 percent more than what it spent in the same period last year, while Oracle increased outlays for lobbying the federal government for Q1, spending $1.72 million. Both companies lobbied on similar issues, including cybersecurity and intellectual property as well as on House (HR-699) and Senate (S-356) legislation focused on updating the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) (see 1604140010), which the technology industry strongly favors.
Rural carrier broadband contributed $24.2 billion to the U.S. economy in 2015, about two-thirds of which benefited urban areas, said a Hudson Institute study released Wednesday on the economic impact of rural telcos, as defined by the 1996 Telecom Act. Rural carriers were responsible for 69,600 jobs -- through direct employment and employment generated by the goods and services they bought -- and rural broadband supported more than $100 billion in e-commerce, said the study authored by Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Hanns Kuttner and commissioned by the Foundation for Rural Service, a nonprofit created by NTCA.