Providing Wireless Service in Rural Alaska Can Be Challenge, RCA Says
Several competitive wireless eligible telecom carriers have indefinitely put off deploying wireless facilities to nearly 50 rural exchanges across Alaska, many of which don't have a competing wireless carrier and thus don't have any wireless voice service, said the Regulatory…
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Commission of Alaska (RCA) in FCC comments that were attached to the state's certification of support for high-cost ETCs. The logistics of providing wireless service to remote Alaska villages are uniquely challenging, the RCA said in docket 10-90. That "make[s] all the more reasonable the legitimate business concerns these ETCs with unfulfilled deployment commitments have raised before us," the RCA said. It urged the FCC to take up President Barack Obama's strategic focus on the Arctic by making telecom infrastructure across Alaska a stated priority; continue to engage with Alaska carriers to address the potential gaps through which many of Alaska's "most vulnerable customers are at risk of falling"; and provide "fair, ongoing, and stable subsidies necessary to build that telecommunications infrastructure" and set firm, near-term deployment deadlines for the ETCs that may receive them.