Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

The Biden administration’s Wednesday request for Congress to appropriate an additional $6 billion to fully fund the FCC’s affordable connectivity program (ACP) through the end of 2024 (see 2310250075) is drawing initial skepticism from top telecom-focused Republicans amid their push for the commission to be more transparent about how it has been spending the program’s existing $14.2 billion allocation. Congressional Democrats enthusiastically backed the White House’s request, noting it would give Capitol Hill more breathing room to examine whether and how to tie in changes to a longer-term ACP with a push for broader USF revamp legislation. Current estimates peg ACP as likely to exhaust its funding from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act during the first half of 2024 (see 2309210060).

Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and subpanel members from both parties voiced growing frustration during a Tuesday hearing with DOJ’s perceived reticence in enforcing existing anti-robocall statutes and eyed the FCC’s Further NPRM giving consumers more choice on the robocalls and robotexts they will receive (see 2306080043). There was more uneven interest among Senate Communications members and witnesses at the hearing in pursuing additional legislation to address ongoing robocall problems amid those enforcement shortcomings.

Proposed changes to Nebraska's USF program saw disagreements during Nebraska Public Service Commission hearing testimony Tuesday over benchmark speeds for targeting support and what data to use to define unserved and underserved areas. State USF Fund Director Cullen Robbins said the USF Fund recommends maintaining the speed threshold at 25/3 Mbps for targeting support. He said changing that threshold would potentially divert unserved support to areas that might qualify as underserved. Robbins said the fund also recommends changing the structure of payments for the high-cost program. Today it pays on a reimbursement basis, but that has resulted in issues of the fund rising to high levels and legislators wanting to access that money for other purposes. Robbins said a structured payout process, with some funding being paid during the course of a project, might work better. Andy Pollock of Rembolt Ludtke, representing the Rural Nebraska Broadband Alliance, urged transitioning by July 1, 2025, away from USF support for infrastructure that cannot provide 100 Mbps symmetrical speeds. He said there's no reason to continue supporting obsolete infrastructure providing lower speeds. Charter Communications Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Tim Goodwin said that rather than 100 Mbps symmetrical, 100/20 Mbps or 25/3 Mbps would be better benchmarks because those speeds align with other state program standards. Making 100 Mbps symmetrical the benchmark for unserved or underserved would be out of line with numerous state and federal programs, he said. Many cable operators offer 1 Gbps downstream speeds but not 100 Mbps upstream, so with a 100 Mbps symmetrical standard, "you just declared almost all of Lincoln and most of Omaha unserved," he said. Consortia Consulting Director Dan Davis, representing a group of rural LECs, said that a transition to 100 Mbps symmetrical to establish served status would be sound policy, but that 2025 was too soon and a graduated approach should be taken through 2028. Multiple speakers testified in support of using FCC broadband data collection data for determining high-cost support distributions for 2024 and forward. BDC data, “as imperfect as it is,” is still better than the Form 477 alternative, said Charter's Goodwin. However, said Davis, BDC data "is demonstrably inaccurate," overcounting the number of broadband serviceable locations. He said once the data is more accurate, the LECs would support using it for future USF distributions.

Senate Public Works Committee ranking member Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., urged the FCC to act on its “long-standing pole attachment proceeding” looking at a 2020 NCTA petition for clarification on pole replacements in unserved areas (see 2007170023). The commission issued a declaratory ruling in 2021 that didn’t act on the petition but clarified that charging the entire cost of a pole replacement to a requesting attacher when the attacher isn't the sole cause of the replacement is “unreasonable and inconsistent” with the Communications Act Section 224 (see 2101190027). The FCC also has an open further NPRM on pole attachment rules it began in 2022 (see 2207130057). The “record is complete and the time is right for the Commission to act in a unanimous fashion,” Capito said in a letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel that circulated Friday. In “hard to serve regions of the country, broadband networks are dependent on access to an existing and long established network of utility poles,” but “the process for obtaining timely and reasonable access to poles is too often obstructed due to a number of factors such as workforce shortages and pole owners that are seeking to offer broadband services and receive” federal funding, Capito said: “Absent prompt attention” from the FCC “to act quickly on pending issues before it” like the pole attachment proceeding, “likely will result in missed deadlines and timelines for network construction, as well as changes to deployment plans that will mean that millions of Americans without broadband will have to wait even longer.”

FCC commissioners divided Thursday on a vote to reestablish net neutrality rules, during the agency's first open meeting with a full commission since Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel took the helm (see 2310130051). Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington voted against an NPRM seeking comment on a proposal to return to 2015 rules that classified broadband as a Title II telecom service.

The era of FCC agreement on most items appears to be over. In addition to the fight over net neutrality, and perhaps the longest statement yet at a meeting by Commissioner Brendan Carr (see 2310190020), Carr and Simington dissented Thursday on a declaratory ruling clarifying that the use of Wi-Fi on school buses is an educational purpose and eligible for E-rate funding. But an order approving changes to rules for wireless emergency alerts, a notice of inquiry on broadband and maternal health and an NPRM on connectivity in Alaska were approved without dissents.

T-Mobile faced tough questions Tuesday from a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel on the carrier’s argument that states must align with the FCC’s revenue-based USF contribution mechanism. The court heard T-Mobile and subsidiaries’ challenge to a U.S. District Court for Northern California March 31 decision not to block the California Public Utilities Commission’s April 1 change to a connections-based method.

The FCC disagreed with a letter from USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter urging the House and Senate Intelligence committees’ leaders to “pay special attention to the FCC’s mission creep into the cybersecurity space” because of the draft NPRM (see 2310160062). Although the commission “is already actively involved in federal interagency cybersecurity planning, coordination, and response activities, it has limited authority to incorporate updated cybersecurity standards into its network policies,” a spokesperson emailed us Monday. “A clear example of this is” the FCC’s Communications Act Section 214 authority, “which provides the agency with the ability to monitor and mitigate the existence of bad actors in telecommunication systems. That authority currently extends only to phone networks, not broadband. Similarly, the FCC has been closely working with other federal agencies on the best way to identify Broadband Gateway Protocol (BGP) vulnerabilities and mitigate risks, a process that would be strengthened through Title II reclassification by providing the agency with the clear and direct authority to act in close coordination with other agencies.”

Relative to the epic battles preceding the FCC’s last two votes on net neutrality rules, in 2015 and 2017, things have been relatively quiet on net neutrality since Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she would seek a vote on an NPRM Oct. 19 (see 2309260047). There have statements for and against, but nothing compared with the fights of the past, industry observers told us.

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington sat down with Communications Daily last week to discuss his new role as a minority commissioner, the agency’s relationship with the NTIA, and his thoughts on proposals to reopen the record on virtual MVPDs and increase the agency’s collection of EEO information from broadcasters. Following are Simington's lightly edited responses.