FCC Urged to Suspend E-Rate Voice Support Phasedown; DDoS Also Targeted
The FCC should take a "time-out" from phasing down E-rate support for voice service, said Funds for Learning, in comments filed Tuesday in docket 13-184 on the commission's eligible service list for the school and library telecom discount program in…
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the funding year beginning July 1, 2017 (see 1606060008). FFL said schools and libraries "desperately need" voice service support and it proposed keeping the phasedown at its 40 percent reduction from the support level for "Category One" services, which are needed to provide broadband Internet access. "Applicants submitted more requests for discounts on voice service than for any other type of service," the E-rate-compliance consulting and web services firm said. "Applicants must have voice services to conduct school business and to keep everyone in their buildings safe and secure. ... In contrast, the Commission’s short-term target of 100 Mbps service per 1000 students and longer-term target of 1 Gbps per 1,000 students remains just that -- something for schools and libraries to aspire to, but which remains, as a practical matter, something that they would like to have." In other comments (due Tuesday), AdTec asked for "the expanded inclusion of cellular data service for key staff members without the requirement that such a service be directly compared to the cost of providing data service" through building Wi-Fi service, which the group said wasn't reliable in emergencies. Cox Communications urged the Wireline Bureau to make "Distributed Denial of Service ('DDoS') attack prevention and mitigation services" eligible for E-rate support, given "a marked increase" in such attacks, which "can cripple" school systems. The Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology recommended DDOS mitigation service be treated the same as firewall protection -- meaning it would be a Category One service if a standard component of a vendor's Internet access service but would be a Category Two service (for internal connections) if provided by other vendors or priced out separately. The department also recommended "that dark fiber obtained via lease or IRU [indefeasible right of use] as part of a construction project, with the goal of reducing the overall construction cost, be classified as special construction" under the program's terms.