Alaska Communications Asks FCC to Increase Rural Health Care Budget
The FCC should increase its Rural Health Care program budget, Alaska Communications representatives said last week when they met with Wireline Bureau staff, recounted a filing posted Tuesday in docket 17-130. Late last year, the company asked the FCC to…
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increase the budget to $1 billion for 2019, up from $581 million in 2018 (see 1812190057). Now, Alaska Communications released a report evaluating increased demand for rural telehealth. Rural telcos need more money to support telehealth services, it said, because of inflation, demand for higher-speed broadband capacity, the need for more sophisticated services, new regulatory requirements for healthcare providers and evolving telehealth technologies. The company asked the agency to direct the USF administrator to extend the funding year filing deadline for the RHC program by 30 days to all applicants, not just those affected by a change to a multiyear funding rule (see 1905200050).