The FCC's third public hearing on consumer broadband labels will be May 25 at 1:30 p.m. EDT, said a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau public notice Thursday in docket 22-2 (see 2204070059). The hearing will include several panels of consumers, experts, digital navigators, disability rights advocates and representatives from federal agencies.
The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau announced 2022-23 allocations for the national deaf-blind equipment distribution program, iCanConnect, said a public notice Monday in docket 10-210. The bureau set aside $250,000 of the $10 million for national outreach by the Perkins School for the Blind and $150,000 to maintain its centralized database or programs to submit information and generate reimbursement claims. The remaining $9.6 million will be used to reimburse certified programs for "the cost of equipment and authorized related services," the notice said.
The FCC committed nearly $50 million in additional Emergency Connectivity Fund support, totaling nearly $4.9 billion so far, said a news release Tuesday (see 2205040045). The new funding includes more than $49 million in commitments from applicants during the first window and more than $1 million from the second application window. It will support 46 schools, seven libraries and two consortiums.
Lumen asked the FCC to reject Aureon's proposed tariff refund plan, after an FCC order requiring the company to submit information needed to calculate refunds to its customers, in comments posted Monday in docket 18-60 (see 2204280038). Lumen said Aureon used actual minutes of use to calculate interstate switched access transport rates that the FCC previously found unlawful and it "continues to overstate its revenue requirement." The FCC "should scrutinize the Aureon revenue requirements supporting the refund access rates to ensure that Aureon has complied with prior commission directive," it said.
NTCA asked the FCC to grant a waiver of the affordable connectivity program's "uniform, rolling 30-day" non-usage period for small providers that offer a fully subsidized plan to tribal households, said a petition posted Friday in docket 21-450. The group also sought a waiver for ACP subscribers that qualified through Lifeline. The rule "requires an automated functionality that many of these entities do not have," NTCA said, asking the FCC to allow small providers serving tribal consumers to abide by emergency broadband benefit program rules on non-usage. AT&T is also seeking a targeted waiver for consumers receiving asymmetric digital subscriber line services (see 2205090056).
The FCC "must adopt a new rate plan quickly" for video relay service funded by the Telecom Relay Service Fund, said ZVRS and Purple Communications CEO Sherri Turpin in a letter posted Thursday in docket 03-123 (see 2111150057). A third extension by six months of the rates that were set to expire in June 2021 "would have a devastating impact" on VRS, Turpin said, adding it would "amount to another rate cut in real terms." The FCC has "significantly cut rates over the past twelve months as a result of unanswered inflation," Turpin said: "The repeated extensions of the 2017 rates that have taken place have only served to create uncertainty for VRS providers and consumers and put providers under increasing pressure to do more with less in order to maintain service."
The FCC Wireline Bureau approved the National Exchange Carrier Association's proposed average schedule interstate settlement disbursements formulas for July 1 through June 30, 2023, said an order Wednesday in docket 21-473 (see 2202100066).
The FCC waived the budget control mechanism for rural cost-based Connect America Fund broadband loop support and high-cost loop support recipients until June 2023, said an order Tuesday in docket 10-90. "Absent a waiver, the projected budget control reduction factor would exceed 14%," the order said. The order "makes eminent sense," said Commissioner Brendan Carr: "Now is not the time to cut back on the support for these rural providers." Other commissioners didn't release a statement. Several groups sought an extension of the waiver, including NTCA, USTelecom and WTA (see 2204110062). WTA "strongly supports the FCC's actions to spare small broadband providers serving rural areas the worst effects of the [budget control mechanism] for another year," said Senior Vice President-Government and Industry Affairs Derrick Owens.
ClearCaptions asked the FCC to seek additional information from Global Caption on how it will "ensure its proposed [automatic speech recognition]-only offering will provide functionally equivalent" IP captioned telephone services if it grants the company's application for certification to provide ASR-based IP CTS supported by the Telecom Relay Service Fund. In comments posted Tuesday in docket 03-123 (see 2204070050), ClearCaptions said it "does not believe ASR-only IP CTS delivers acceptable experiences on unscripted calls" and recommended the FCC seek information about how Global Caption will provide functionally equivalent service "when captioning on calls is or becomes problematic for the ASR system." Several advocacy groups, including the Hearing Loss Association of America, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, National Association of the Deaf, and Gallaudet University's Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, said the FCC should "carefully evaluate" Global Caption's application to ensure it meets the "concededly low bar" of delivering a "similar level of quality to those already certified." The groups also sought scrutiny of the quality and privacy aspects of the company's plan to provide ASR-based IP CTS to incarcerated individuals.
The FCC Wireline Bureau announced its annual tariff review plans for LECs, effective July 1, in an order posted Monday in docket 22-108. The bureau waived commission rules limiting annual access charge tariff filings to rate-level changes and clarified the "extent that rate-of return carriers receiving model-based universal service support may recover certain exogenous costs through end user charges and Connect America Fund-Intercarrier Compensation (CAF-ICC) support." The bureau also reminded LECs that are required to submit annual filings to pay the new filing fees through the new payment system, said a public notice.