SHLB Seeks FCC Rural Health Care Funding Hike, Certainty; Telcos Also Comment
The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition urged the FCC to resolve open issues in its USF Rural Health Care Program and make changes to its Telecom Program and Healthcare Connect Fund components. SHLB proposals included increasing a $581 million…
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annual cap to $800 million, adopting a deadline for processing RHC applications, clarifying a “rural” definition and providing support “for 95 percent of the difference between the urban and rural rates (except in Alaska) in order to reduce funding delays and expedite application approvals,” said a release on comments posted Thursday in docket 17-310 responding to a public notice. Six months after a funding year 2018 application deadline, “a sizable number of RHC applicants still have no idea whether they will be funded,” said Executive Director John Windhausen. “The demand for RHC funding has exceeded the funding cap the last two years, yet there’s still no policy or precedent for how funding should be allocated when this occurs. The program has become shrouded in ambiguity and uncertainty, and we fear that the rural healthcare providers most in need will withdraw from the program.” AT&T said the FCC should phase out the Telecom Program outside Alaska and adopt "E-rate best practices" during the transition. Alaska Communications proposed rural and urban rate calculations "using an administratively simple, lowest corresponding price rule, or a convenient rate matrix, which would serve as a ceiling in the case of rural rates, and a floor in the case of urban rates, to ensure that support remains predictable and the size of the RHC program remains reasonable." TeleQuality Communications suggested "a market-based approach as an alternative to establishing a more complicated regulatory regime for the Telecom Program." GCI Communication urged the FCC to "ensure that rural rates are determined by the market," without additional rate regulation or cost studies. GCI supplemented an application for review seeking FCC reversal of a Wireline Bureau reduction in its RHC support by 26 percent in FY 2017 (see 1811130040) with information it "could not have known or addressed at the time" of its appeal.