New York, Massachusetts Officials Lobby FCC on CAF II Auction; ViaSat Knocks Utilities
New York state officials pressed the FCC to keep Connect America Fund auction support in New York and other states where price-cap ILECs declined commission offers of Phase II broadband-oriented support. Reallocating the declined support to other states "would not…
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ensure the deployment of broadband services in those New York communities the FCC previously had identified as unserved or underserved by broadband," said representatives of Empire State Development and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a filing in docket 10-90 about a call with an aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel before lobbying restrictions took effect a week ahead of Wednesday's planned CAF II auction vote. In other recent auction filings: the Massachusetts Broadband Institute asked the FCC to consider favoring bids that leverage other state investments and build off of successful projects under the federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP); Commissioner Karen Charles Peterson of the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable also urged the FCC to give special consideration to eligible recipients of BTOP funding and other state-funded broadband projects; and ViaSat opposed "self-serving" proposals from electric utility interests under which the FCC would "abandon the use of market-based mechanisms that would efficiently allocate limited [CAF] support to the most cost-effective service providers in favor of a complex 'points' scheme that would favor comparably inefficient fiber-based providers, delay the initial selection of winning bidders and invite numerous post-selection challenges, dramatically increase funding requirements, and consequently give rise to a 'funding gap' that would leave hundreds of thousands of households without access to critical broadband services."