‘Egregious’ ACS Connect America Fund Waiver Request Faces Broad Opposition
An Alaska Communications Systems petition for waiver of the Connect America Fund Phase I support rules faced opposition from all who commented. ACS sought a waiver of the rule requiring broadband deployment to one unserved location per each $775 received, a waiver of the definition of “unserved” to exclude those locations served by fixed wireless broadband providers; and a waiver of the definition of “broadband” to count upgrades to existing customers with speeds below 1.5 Mbps. ACS originally accepted about $4.1 million of incremental Phase I support -- the full amount allocated to it by the commission -- but later requested a waiver for $2.5 million of that allocation after a “more detailed analysis” revealed a shaky business case for deployment of broadband where it had intended (CD Sept. 28 p19).
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ACS’s “sole justification” for requesting a waiver of rules it agreed to comply with in July was that “it did not adequately conduct due diligence,” NCTA said (http://xrl.us/bnucq6). This does not represent a “special circumstance” that would justify a waiver, NCTA said. ACS “should have” known that 2,100 of the locations it had planned to build to were ineligible for support because they were shown as served on the National Broadband Map, NCTA said. ACS also should have known in advance that it was expected to build to unserved areas for $775 per location, instead of seeking up to $7,000 per location to extend broadband, NCTA said. “There is no justification whatsoever for allowing ACS to expend limited universal service dollars in such an excessive manner."
ACS’s petition seeks relief that the commission already rejected in an earlier order, General Communications Inc. said (http://xrl.us/bnucrx). The Phase I program has “already allowed ACS to harvest the low-hanging fruit of broadband expansion on a sole-source basis,” GCI said. “The Commission should not expand that opportunity by raising ACS’s support per location by as much as a multiple of ten, allowing ACS to use CAF Phase I support for upgrades that may be locking in an inferior technology, or by subsidizing ACS to displace nascent fixed wireless competitors.” Instead of granting ACS’s waiver, the commission could “more efficiently” hold a reverse auction to award ACS’s otherwise unused $2.5 million in Phase I support to “whichever ETC is willing to expand broadband to the most unserved locations within the ACS ILEC service areas,” GCI said.
ACS’s request to serve 363 locations at an average cost of nearly $7,000 per location is based on a wireline cost model rather than “more cost-effective technologies such as fixed wireless,” the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association said (http://xrl.us/bnucsq). The Phase I rules were not intended to provide such “excessive and unprecedented subsidies,” WISPA said. WISPA objected to what it called an “egregious” request to use Phase I money to deploy broadband service to locations already served by fixed broadband providers.
One of those providers, an unsubsidized provider of fixed wireless broadband called SPITwSPOTS, said ACS’s waiver request relied on “misstatements, conjecture and innuendo” (http://xrl.us/bnucs8). ACS’s request to redefine “broadband” so it can use $2.5 million of declined support to upgrade service to its own customers “essentially asks the Commission to fund ACS’s efforts to help destroy SPITwSPOTS’s business, which is based on hard work [and] private funding to provide faster broadband speeds.” This would be a “grossly unjust and irresponsible use of federal funding,” the ISP said.