Reaction was mixed on CenturyLink’s petition for a waiver on how it...

to use $32.5 million of that to deploy broadband “to locations within specified areas that are shown on the National Broadband Map as served by fixed wireless providers that it contends those fixed wireless providers do not fully serve,” said a June public notice. In comments Wednesday, Montana Internet Corp. objected to the petition. “CenturyLink may elect to take the funds for which it is eligible and to use those monies to deploy broadband in unserved areas; it may elect to decline the funds. CenturyLink’s proposed ’third way’ of taking the money and using it where it wants eviscerates the goal of the Commission to ‘ensure that all areas get broadband-capable networks,'” MIC said (http://xrl.us/bngn8c). The Benton Rural Electric Association, a wireless Internet service provider (WISP) in one of the specified areas, also opposed the petition. “It is inappropriate for CAF grant funds to be used to compete with a non-profit private company that is already providing broadband to these rural areas,” Benton said (http://xrl.us/bngn8n). The Minnesota Department of Commerce supported the request, arguing it would give close to 6,000 households a wireline broadband option “at much more affordable rates and higher speeds than the WISP offering that may be available” (http://xrl.us/bngn9d). The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission also supports the petition, arguing that without a waiver, consumers in the areas served by WISPs “may not be able to receive broadband service at all” (http://xrl.us/bngn9j). The waiver “would allow CenturyLink to spend tens of millions of dollars to bring more broadband services to more rural and high-cost customers who do not have reasonable access to broadband service today,” a CenturyLink spokesman told us. “If the waiver application is approved, CenturyLink will build needed broadband services to thousands of homes in Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Oregon and several other states.”