The Aug. 1 FCC meeting will see voting on creation of a Rural Digital Opportunity Fund that, Chairman Ajit Pai blogged Wednesday, would represent the agency's "single biggest step yet to close the rural digital divide," connecting millions to broadband networks. Also up is a new route to broadband mapping and revisions to local franchise authority rules, the latter as expected (see 1907090030). Pai said the fund would provide $20.4 billion over the next 10 years supporting rural networks, operating in two phases using a multi-round, descending-clock reverse auction to ensure maximum coverage at the lowest possible cost. He said the first phase would target areas already unserved while the second focus on areas not won in the first phase and areas that are partially served. He said his proposal also would set a minimum speed of 25/3 Mbps for the auction and favor services with lower latency, and open the auction to ISPs ranging from small cable companies and rural telephone companies to electric co-ops and fixed wireless companies. Pai said the digital opportunity data collection broadband mapping approach would collect granular broadband availability maps from service providers using shapefiles, with those maps verified through crowdsourcing. Pai said the LFA order "would prevent local authorities from unlawfully evading the five percent statutory cap on franchise fees" and make clear franchising authorities can't regulate non-cable services offered by cable operators over their cable systems. Such fees and regulations chill broadband deployment, he said. Also on the agenda will be changes to the Rural Health Care program, which provides financial support to help rural healthcare providers obtain communications services at discounted rates for telehealth services, including a new route for calculating the rates that healthcare providers pay. The agenda will feature 833 toll-free auction procedures, with the auction to be conducted in December; updated technical rules for low-power FM stations to allow greater use of directional antennas and of FM booster stations; new licensing rules for small satellites (see 1907090030); caller ID spoofing rules (see 1907080063); and rules allowing for calling 911 directly on multiline telephone systems.

A letter FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr sent Monday is “disappointing” and “implies EBS is currently underutilized and existing EBS licensees are somehow to blame,” the North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation and Mobile Beacon emailed. The two responded to a letter to NACEPF asking about its business practices in light of its holdings of educational broadband service spectrum (see 1907080070). Both are reviewing the letter and intend to “respond appropriately,” they said. “NACEPF and Mobile Beacon have already provided the Commission with extensive information about the scope and depth of our existing programs, which specifically and successfully provide broadband for educational purposes, not only in our licensed market areas but throughout all 50 states. Moreover, over 95 percent of all organizations and individuals that filed comments in this proceeding have told the Commission to preserve EBS for education, many detailing various ways they are using Mobile Beacon’s service to support education." Commissioners are to take up an order reallocating the EBS band Wednesday (see 1906180072).

Delaying comments on competitive bidding procedures for the 833 toll-free numbers auction would unnecessarily delay the auction, said the FCC Wireline Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics in a docket 17-192 order Tuesday. The agency said responsible organization TollFreeNumbers.com's ask for an extension as GAO hears its bid protests about selecting Somos as auctioneer was unrelated to the setting of auction proceedings. GAO dismissed that protest June 19. The FCC said RespOrg Get800's request and issues of how the auction might affect the toll-free number market are similarly outside the proceeding's scope. The proceeding's deadlines were June 3 and 10. In a docket 17-192 posting Tuesday, TollFreeNumbers.com said having Somos auction 833 numbers directly to RespOrgs' customers instead of through RespOrgs violates the Communications Act and is outside toll-free number administrator, service management system database administrator, numbering administration administrator and numbering administration service center duties. It said Somos itself said it could administer the auction among RespOrgs but not that it could execute the auction proposed by the FCC.

Commissioners will vote at their Aug. 1 meeting on rules to help ensure first responders can locate more quickly callers who contact 911 from multiline telephone systems, the agency said Tuesday. Chairman Ajit Pai circulated draft rules to implement Kari's Law Act of 2017 and the Ray Baum's Act of 2018 to extend 911 location requirements to new telecom platforms (see 1812110025). Multiline systems are commonly used by hotels, college campuses and office buildings, and often require users to dial 9 before dialing 911. The new rules for docket 18-261 would establish new location requirements for VoIP and telecom relay services (see 1905280018).

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr sent a letter to the North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation, the third organization targeted (see 1907050034) in the probe of nonprofits holding educational broadband service licenses. The Monday letter notes the NACEPF listed $60 million in assets in its 2016 Form 990 filing with the IRS. A check of the form substantiated that amount, “What formal restrictions exist on the expenditure of your assets and, in particular, what controls exist to ensure that assets derived from EBS licenses are spent consistent with the purpose of such licenses?” the letter asks: “Do you commit to use all of your accumulated assets and future revenue attributable to EBS licenses -- including the sale of such licenses -- to the provision of instructional material to accredited educational institutions or governmental organizations engaged in the formal education of enrolled students?” The group didn’t comment.

Mandatory broadband access laws lead to higher residential fixed terrestrial broadband subscription rates, said the FCC Office of Economics and Analytics in a working paper Monday. That may be due to increased consumer choices or to lower costs in supplying broadband, it said. It said generally residents of multi-tenant environments are slightly less likely to subscribe to wireline broadband than non-MTE residents. The working paper doesn't specifically address the San Francisco regulation that's subject of a proposed partial pre-emption at Wednesday's FCC meeting (see 1906180053) but said no state mandatory access laws require building owners make their owned wiring available for sharing by multiple service providers. The working paper said 16 states and the District of Columbia had mandatory access rules at the end of 2016.

The FCC needs to “get creative” to address the homework gap, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said Monday at Digital Equity Summit 2019 in Richmond, Virginia. “Nightly schoolwork now requires internet access” and the homework gap “is real,” Rosenworcel said. She cited Lee High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, where schools are lending wireless hot spots and computers to students who need them to do homework. Rosenworcel encouraged educators to make their voices heard in support of the E-rate program: “Make noise. Make a ruckus.” Under one proposal before the FCC, the E-rate and rural telemedicine programs “could share a single funding cap and slug it out for resources,” she said: “I do not support this approach. We have serious broadband problems in this country. And the FCC has a statutory duty to expand the reach of communications to everyone -- no matter who they are or where they live.” The FCC also needs “better data about where broadband is and is not so communities across the country can build on it to address the Homework Gap,” Rosenworcel said. She backed making more spectrum available for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use, and using spectrum auction proceeds to pay for better connections through a homework gap fund.

The deadline to comment on an NPRM to establish new budget caps on the USF is extended by two weeks to July 29, replies Aug. 26, said an FCC Wireline Bureau order Friday in docket 06-122. Dozens of groups asked the agency last month to extend the comment period to Sept. 30, replies to Oct. 30, to allow time for rural schools to participate. The groups, led by the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition and the National Consumer Law Center, supported an earlier request by the Education and Library Networks Coalition to "extend the comment period for this matter until at least the end of September 2019 to provide ample time for the Commission to hear the opinions of a major constituency of the E-rate program" because in mid-summer, "most school E-rate beneficiaries will not be able to inform the Commission's decisions on creating an overall universal service cap and possibly combining E-Rate and Rural Health Care program under a single cap." SHLB is "grateful that the Commission has extended the comment deadline, as every little bit helps," a spokesperson for SHLB emailed Friday. Advocacy groups and Democratic commissioners have raised concerns about the proposed budget caps, claiming they could pit the interests of schools and libraries against those of rural health facilities (see 1906030059).

Chairman Ajit Pai is “optimistic” the FCC “will have results to show” on the C band in the fall, he told a 5G workshop at the Congreso Latinoamericano De Telecomunicaciones Thursday. Last week, the agency got more comments on the C band (see 1907050035). The FCC also continues its work on making the 3.1-3.55 GHz band available for commercial use. Pai defended a draft order on the educational broadband service band, set for a vote Wednesday (see 1907050034). EBS rules “date back decades,” Pai said: “At that time, it was envisioned that this spectrum would be used for educational TV. But today, this band is dramatically underused, with much of this spectrum lying fallow. That’s unacceptable.” Pai also stressed the importance of 5G security. “5G will affect our militaries, our industries, our critical infrastructure, and much more,” he said: “The procurement and deployment decisions made now will have a generational impact on our security, economy, and society.” The world can’t make “risky choices and just hope for the best,” he said: “We must see clearly the threats to the security of our networks and act to address them. And the more that the United States and our regional allies can work together and make security decisions based on shared principles, the safer that our 5G networks will be.” Pai said he strongly supports the principles approved in May by the Prague 5G Security Conference (see 1905030052). In another speech at a universal service workshop at the congress, Pai said the FCC is rejiggering the USF program to make it more effective through reverse auctions. Pai said he has seen firsthand how well that approach works. An auction last year provided $1.5 billion to connect more than 713,000 unserved homes and businesses nationwide, saving $3.5 billion from estimated costs of those connections, he said. “Later this year, we will start the process of setting up a $20.4 billion broadband expansion program called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund,” Pai said: “Applying lessons learned from the recent reverse auction, this program will spur the deployment of high-speed broadband networks across more of rural America over the next decade.” Other work continues, he said: “We’ve increased subsidies for small, rural carriers, while giving them more aggressive buildout requirements. We’ve increased the budget for our rural healthcare program and are designing a connected care pilot program to realize the potential of telehealth solutions outside the hospital.” Commissioners will also vote Wednesday on an NPRM for a three-year, $100 million USF telehealth pilot program (see 1906180053).

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai hopes Inter-American (CITEL) Telecommunication Commission participants next month walk away having agreed on protection limits that safeguard passive sensors on science satellites while maximizing 5G's use of the 24 GHz band, according to prepared remarks for the Congreso Latinoamericano de Telecomunicaciones (CLT) in Argentina posted Wednesday. He said other regions, such as the Arab Spectrum Management Group and the African Telecommunication Union, are "endorsing reasonable limits [and] the facts and physics make a compelling case for ... even less restrictive limits." An international mobile telecom designation in the 50 GHz band, with protections for incumbents, coming out of the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference could also help grow mobile services, Pai said. He said the U.S. hopes WRC-19 will generate a harmonization internationally of domestic rules promoting higher-powered outdoor use of the 5150-5250 MHz band. And he backed expanded use of the 37.5-39.5, 39.5-42.5, 47.2-50.2 and 50.4-51.4 GHz bands non-geostationary orbit satellite systems. Pai said he was the first FCC chairman to attend CLT.