Q Link Wireless Urges FCC to Direct USAC to Fix Lifeline National Verifier 'Flaw,' Use APIs
The FCC should correct a "flaw" in Universal Service Administrative Co. implementation of a Lifeline national verifier (NV) that will "effectively deny" millions of rural low-income Americans access to mobile broadband services, said a Q Link Wireless filing posted Tuesday…
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in docket 17-287 on a meeting with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, and a Wireless Bureau official. The Lifeline provider said "plans for machine-to-machine interfaces (i.e. application programming interfaces, or APIs) that would have permitted carrier-assisted, online verification and enrollment of Lifeline consumers" were mysteriously removed from USAC's design: "No one with whom we have spoken at USAC or at the Commission seems to know who decided to remove APIs or why that was done." The planned NV "would permit consumer online eligibility verification if the consumer can navigate that process without the carrier, and it would permit carriers using agents to have the agents assist consumers with eligibility verification and enrollment, but it will not support both online eligibility verification and carrier assistance to consumers at the same time," Q Link said. "This is fundamentally irrational, and cannot be based on any discernable [sic] technical or network security grounds." Many rural Americans, "who have far less access to in-person assistance and disproportionately depend on web-based enrollment," will be "abandoned," it said, urging the FCC to direct USAC to restore APIs before the NV's "hard launch" later this year: "The good news is that there are technical solutions that would make it relatively easy, with a minimum amount of additional development time (Q Link estimates 20 hours), to develop these APIs to permit online, carrier-assisted eligibility verification and enrollment in a single, non-mandatory carrier process." The FCC didn't comment Wednesday. Meanwhile, NARUC pressed its arguments opposing an FCC proposal to exclude pure resellers from Lifeline and supporting a proposal to restore state Lifeline carrier designation authority, said a filing on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. The National Lifeline Association filed comments objecting to new FCC tribal Lifeline subscriber notice requirements, saying the agency "has not taken seriously" its Paperwork Reduction Act duties to minimize provider burdens.