FCC OKs $950 Million in CAF Subsidy for Four Telcos; Official Points to Coming Auction
The FCC authorized four telcos to receive almost $950 million in Connect America Fund support, the Wireline Bureau said Friday in a public notice in docket 10-90 after the companies Thursday announced the states for which they had decided to…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
accept Phase II funding (see 1508270068). CenturyLink will receive $505.7 million, AT&T will receive $427.7 million, Consolidated Communications will receive $13.9 million and Cincinnati Bell will receive $2.2 million for 2015. The bureau also issued a public notice saying Verizon had accepted $48.6 million Phase II support in California and Texas, conditioned on regulatory approvals of its wireline system sales in those two states to Frontier Communications. Responding to a Verizon request to defer CAF support until the deal closes, the bureau directed Universal Service Administrative Co. to suspend support to Verizon in the two states until further notice. In total, 10 price-cap carriers have accepted up to $1.5 billion in CAF Phase II annual support through 2020 to provide 10/1 Mbps broadband to almost 7.3 million consumers in rural, high-cost areas of 45 states, said Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Carol Mattey in a Friday blog post. “The funding that will flow to these areas will go a long way toward closing the digital divide isolating rural America.” Mattey said some companies didn’t accept support in some states, but the agency is preparing to “unleash the power of market competition to provide broadband” in those areas. “The FCC will open the door for other companies, including cable companies, neighboring rate-of-return carriers, electric companies, satellite companies and fixed-wireless providers, to compete for the first time with the price cap carrier incumbents to win these subsidies through a market-based auction,” she said, referring to a reverse auction the commission is developing in which the low bidder would win the subsidy in a high-cost area. “Our Rural Broadband Experiments program demonstrated that competitive auctions can draw interest from a variety of providers willing to provide faster broadband at lower cost, and we now are eager to implement competitive bidding on a larger scale across the country.”