FCC Should Have Made Available Draft Mobility Fund Order, CCA Says

for next week’s commissioners’ meeting, new Chairman Ajit Pai opted to release as part of a pilot program the drafts of two media orders, but not the Mobility Fund (see 1702020051). “This proceeding cries out for publication of the draft order with sufficient time for review and comment, a step toward transparency and improved outcomes that both the Chairman and Commissioner [Mike] O’Rielly have proposed,” said the filing in docket 10-208. “It also calls for rigorous examination of the reliability of the data on which the Commission will rely, and consideration of the costs and benefits of the Commission’s proposals, efforts that both leaders, again, have rightly supported.” The FCC simply can’t afford to get the rules wrong, CCA said: “Rural America cannot shoulder a misfire on MFII. Indeed, for rural Americans in particular, the consequences of a poorly crafted and implemented MFII would be difficult to overstate.” AT&T Services, “on behalf of its affiliates,” told the FCC it supports the agency’s plan to use data collected from Form 477 filings as the starting point for determining areas that should be eligible for MFII support. “We understand that there is some concern that the quality of the data is not appropriate for this purpose because of the uncertainty over whether carriers are submitting Form 477 data in a consistent manner,” the company said in a letter filed in docket 10-208. “Carriers are not required to publicly disclose their Form 477 methodologies. However, AT&T would like to take this opportunity to note that our Form 477 Mobile Broadband Deployment data and Mobile Voice Deployment data as of June 2016 used coverage boundaries at a resolution of 90 meters.” Verizon urged the FCC to adopt reasonable rules for the new fund, in meetings with aides to all three commissioners, said a filing by the carrier. “The Commission should ensure that the service obligations for Mobility Fund recipients are reasonable, given the challenges of deploying LTE service in the difficult areas that are currently unserved,” Verizon said. “A requirement that Mobility Fund recipients cover 90 percent of the bid area could discourage bids.” The proposed buildout standard is “substantially more stringent” than the standard for the initial Mobility Fund, Verizon noted, since Phase I had a buildout target of 75 percent, “and applied that target to road miles, not to all square miles.” A requirement that carriers deliver speeds of 10 Mbps downstream, 1 Mbps upstream “could discourage bids or increase bid amounts, thus depleting the auction budget more quickly,” Verizon said. “We urged the Commission to adopt a lower downstream speed target, such as the 5 megabit per second target proposed by AT&T and smaller providers.” An order approving the fund appears headed to approval at next week’s commissioners' meeting, though questions remain and parts of the rules appear to still be in flux (see 1702150035).