Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, wanted FCC Chairman Tom...
Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, wanted FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to see firsthand the telecom challenges of Alaska, hosting Wheeler for a visit last week. “I took Chairman Wheeler to Anchorage, Kotzebue and Kiana so that he could see how to…
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best deliver connectivity to an urban community, a hub community and a rural village,” Begich told us in a statement. “He heard Alaskans talk about the need for better, more affordable bandwidth to improve education, medical services and to help grow businesses across the state.” Begich’s daily schedule records show visits to Kiana and Kotzebue Thursday and Anchorage the previous day, which included a meeting with General Communications Inc. and a discussion about broadband deployment. An FCC spokesman confirmed to us Friday that Wheeler was in Alaska meeting with Begich and staff to the state’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young, both Republicans. An ex parte filing from Copper Valley Telephone Cooperative recounted a meeting Wednesday that included Wheeler and aide Patrick Halley discussing Alaska’s rural challenges with Copper Valley Chief Financial Officer Pam Murphy, Alaska Telephone Association Executive Director Christine O'Connor, Begich legislative correspondent Rafi Bortnick and Young legislative assistant Jason Suslavich. “I thanked the Chairman for his leadership in eliminating the QRA [quantile regression analysis high-cost support] model, but expressed my concern with what would replace QRA to distribute High Cost USF support,” Copper Valley CEO David Dengel wrote in the ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1qXzW2L). “I told the Chairman that because of the elimination of the QRA, CVT is able to deploy fiber to the community of Slana this summer at a cost of approximately $650,000.” They discussed the factors any high-cost support model would have to include. “The FCC has already invested significant amounts of Universal Service Fund support in Alaska in the past several decades which has allowed for twenty first century technologies to reach hundreds of villages across the state,” Begich said. “Without this support, none of that would be possible and Alaska would be left in the dark. I showed Chairman Wheeler that we are putting these funds to good use and making a case for future investment."