MF-II Demise Disappoints States That Paid to Challenge Maps

South Dakota “spent a lot of money and a lot of effort” preparing a challenge, but the FCC appears to be giving carriers that submitted inaccurate data a pass by taking no enforcement action against them, said Public Service Commission Vice Chairman Chris Nelson (R). It’s good South Dakota’s finding that maps erroneously showed coverage in 30 percent of tested areas convinced the FCC not to proceed with carrier maps, he said. The PSC paid nearly $71,000 to audit coverage, and he thinks the FCC will probably throw out state data.

"No one is happy about the outcome," an FCC spokesperson emailed Friday. "The staff report identified significant problems with the provider LTE maps, which the challengers' input would not correct. The challenge process was designed to correct generally reliable coverage maps," not to "correct generally unreliable maps." Without reliable data to determine areas eligible for funding, FCC said, "the auction can't go forward," and its best course is to look ahead to 5G auctions, the representative said.

Vermont “spent thousands of dollars,” said Department of Public Service Telecom and Connectivity Division Director Clay Purvis. “We purchased phones with our own money. It was our staff that could have been doing other things that was out driving the roads of Vermont using a leased [Toyota] Prius.” Vermont found wireless dead zones triple what carriers reported to the FCC (see 1901170032). The staff report validated DPS concerns, but “we’re very disappointed that the FCC has decided to resolve the matter by terminating the program.” Purvis hopes Vermont data can be salvaged for the new program, but “it’s going to become stale as time moves on.”

New NARUC President Brandon Presley sympathized with frustrations of states that challenged MF-II maps, and he applauded the new 5G fund. The Democratic chairman of the Mississippi Public Service Commission "stayed out many nights until midnight and later … doing speed tests,” so “absolutely, that’s disappointing.” About 13,000 state volunteers tested speeds to verify the MF-II maps, he said. Presley praised the FCC for recognizing the “magnitude of the inaccuracies.” He sees the 5G fund as a “step forward” because rural America deserves 5G as much as elsewhere.

The FCC hasn’t given enough details on the 5G fund to say whether it's an adequate replacement for MF-II, said Purvis. “My understanding about 5G is that it’s really about capacity building,” said Purvis. “But the problem that we’re trying to solve in Vermont is that we have these large geographic areas with absolutely no cell coverage whatsoever, and now we’re waiting even longer for that.” 5G costs much more than finishing 4G LTE deployment in unserved areas, he added. “There’s no towers in these areas to do any cell service whatsoever, and 5G really contemplates a significant increase in the number of sites and the types.”

Nelson applauded focus on rural and precision agriculture. What’s unknown is how the FCC will identify where to distribute the money, he said. “We’ve still got a lot of areas that have no coverage whatsoever” in the Great Plains, he said. Nelson’s hearing more frequently from consumers that 4G coverage has been deteriorating.

FCC's Role

Stakeholders hope for FCC outreach. Presley hopes the FCC invites states to a workshop to develop data collection and mapping standards: “We get probably a lot more complaints to our offices about these issues than make their way up to the FCC.” Presley plans to invite the FCC to sit on NARUC’s new rural broadband taskforce (see 1911270024), which could meet first at the association's Feb. 9-12 meeting in Washington. The FCC shouldn’t spend any of the proposed $9 billion until better mapping standards are developed and the technology approach for bringing 5G to rural America is fleshed out, said Nelson.

"Be more attuned to the concerns of state utility commissioners," said former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, Common Cause special adviser. He would like more cooperation between state and local officials on addressing gaps in mobile broadband deployment and moving to 5G. "We don't have a strategy," the Democrat said.

The Rural Wireless Association spoke by phone Thursday with members who had been involved with drive test challenges to coverage data provided by Verizon and T-Mobile, said General Counsel Carri Bennet. She said the testing in aggregate cost millions of dollars that smaller carriers could have spent upgrading their broadband networks. Some members asked whether they could get reimbursed.

Some members spent eight or nine months, Bennet said, because leaving the "blatantly inaccurate" mapping data unchallenged could put some small carriers at risk of losing business. An overstatement of coverage from another provider could deem a rural area ineligible for the funds. Delay in the USF mobile broadband auctions means some rural carriers must slow expansion of LTE networks, Bennet said. She added the MF II auctions would have taken place by now if not for the bad coverage maps.

USF Concerns

Don't give mobile support to carriers that overstated coverage, said Gigi Sohn of Georgetown Law Institute. Yosef Getachew, Common Cause director-media and democracy programming, is alarmed the FCC didn't take enforcement action against carriers that may have overstated their coverage: "They have licenses, and they're lying to the FCC."

Verizon and T-Mobile declined comment Friday.

It's good the FCC is aiming higher than 4G LTE by supporting 5G "because the whole concept of universal service funding is based on reasonable comparability" between urban and rural areas, said Mike Romano, NTCA senior vice president-industry affairs and business development. He said building out 5G networks will take time, especially in rural areas, because it requires a lot of towers, fiber and mid-band spectrum. "There's a lot of rural America without any fiber," Romano added, and that's why the FCC's planned Rural Digital Opportunity Fund becomes key for 5G.

"The infrastructure has to be built by the people who have the ability," said National Grange President Betsy Huber. "We don't care if the companies are large or small." Her group's "hopeful it will move us a big step forward to connectivity," she said of the 5G spending.

Broadband expansion helps farmers improve crop yields, said Huber, who had applied for membership on the FCC's new Precision Agriculture Task Force. The agency announced committee leaders Friday (see 1912060037). In many rural areas, service isn't robust enough yet to support mobile health or precision agriculture applications, she said.