GCI Revises Proposed LTE Performance Commitments for Alaska Plan
General Communications (GCI) proposed revised LTE performance commitments to go along with the Alaska Plan that it and others are urging the FCC to adopt for wireless and rate-of-return wireline carrier broadband USF support in the state. While some aspects…
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remain preliminary and subject to refinement, the proposals reflect "a commitment to move all fiber-backhaul areas, and the substantial majority of microwave-backhaul population, to LTE within ten years," GCI said in a filing Wednesday in docket 10-90. "Moreover, GCI will be implementing LTE-over-satellite to approximately half of the population served by satellite backhaul, and will be moving at least 3,000 POPs from satellite backhaul to microwave." GCI is targeting 2 Mbps downlink speeds and 800 kbps uplink speeds for the vast majority of LTE-served POPs. It urged the FCC to adopt the Alaska Plan rules and approve carrier performance plans in the same order "if at all possible." The filing also answered FCC staff questions about GCI's methodology for determining which Alaska census blocks are "served" by AT&T or Verizon LTE systems and which wouldn't be eligible for future support. Alaska Communications, the state's price-cap telco, recently objected to the Alaska Telephone Association's wireless USF proposal, saying it would provide $1 billion over 10 years to competitors, much of it a "windfall" underwriting "GCI's unregulated middle-mile monopoly" (see 1604190012).