Carr and Roth Talk BEAD and USF
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency could look at driving “inefficiencies” out of the USF program and NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth clarified the agency’s focus for the BEAD program in separate Q&As onstage Tuesday at NTCA’s Telecom Executive Policy Summit. NTIA rules restricting the broadband funding that BEAD participants can receive are aimed at preventing bids that rely on “speculative, hypothetical funding” to complete their obligations and at avoiding defaults, Roth said. NTIA said Tuesday that it approved 18 state BEAD proposals (see 2511180007).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
NTIA requirements that providers certify that they won’t take federal subsidies while working on BEAD projects aren’t intended to create “an impossible choice” between BEAD and commitments they have already made, Roth said. NTCA Executive Vice President Michael Romano said many of the group's members receive USF funding in areas they serve and may also apply for BEAD in those areas.
The requirements also don’t apply to services outside the area that providers are servicing under BEAD, she said. “What we're really focused on is those situations where a provider is banking on counting on federal support that is truly hypothetical and that would not be reasonable to rely on, because then you have a much more high risk of default.” The restrictions would apply for the 10-year federal interest period that begins after projects are closed out, Roth added.
Asked what the FCC intends for the USF, Carr said the agency is looking at pushing for “more efficient mechanisms,” and there are “a lot of inefficiencies and legacy models.”
NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said afterward that she understood Carr to be discussing a standardization of USF approaches rather than accounting for the diverse circumstances of particular buildout situations. “A flat model doesn’t work,” she said.
“I think there's a lot of efficiencies that we can drive, which will allow us to continue to deliver our mission but potentially help a little bit with the contribution factor as well,” Carr said. A constantly rising USF contribution factor “is not a good thing.”
He added that the FCC will look to Congress for USF reform, although he hasn’t yet met with the bicameral USF working group.
The agency also has “more to do” on robocalls and copper retirement, Carr said. The latter is an issue the FCC could be “taking bites out of” over several years.