Industry Seeks FCC Flexibility in Resolving A-CAM Location Obligation Discrepancies
The FCC should equitably address discrepancies between the number of rural locations a broadband provider is funded to serve after alternative Connect America cost model (A-CAM) auctions and the number of actual locations the provider encounters during a network build-out phase, industry said in comments to FCC posted through Monday in docket 10-90, rather than impose penalties to providers when pre-bidding estimates turn out to be wrong (see 1907110003). The agency's Wireline Bureau "should study the impact of actual location discrepancies before deciding what measures are appropriate for A-CAM support recipients that experience location shortfalls," ITTA said.
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"Targeted USF programs with locations-based commitments hold great promise for closing the digital divide, but the Commission cannot assign and enforce deployment commitments based on outdated estimates and expect carriers to assume all the risk when the counts are dated," USTelecom said. The industry group said location discrepancies highlight the need for more granular broadband mapping tools (see 1906280059). "Broadband deployment programs based on existing Form 477 data and out of date cost models will inevitably result in deployment obligations that simply do not match facts on the ground," it said. "USTelecom is laser-focused on providing solutions to enable the Commission to develop a granular national dataset of all broadband serviceable locations and broadband availability reporting based on such information." The updated information would help carriers bid more efficiently for USF support "with the confidence that the locations for which they are bidding actually exist," USTelecom said. The better maps would also help the FCC when it has to verify claims from A-CAM support recipients that report location discrepancies, it said.
NTCA asks the FCC to consider a provider's costs to deploy a network throughout the supported area before it decides whether and by how much it should reduce support when "facts on the ground" reveal fewer locations available for a provider to service than an auction model estimated for the USF program (see 1906210010. A pro rata reduction in USF support for each location missed under a provider's obligation doesn't take into account the fixed costs of deploying a network, it said. NTCA asked the FCC to "decline to reduce support for those A-CAM electors that are willing to commit, as described herein and consistent with the level of funding they receive, to serve throughout their supported areas." If the agency decides to reduce its A-CAM support, it should do an evidentiary review first to assess what specific costs would have been associated with the locations that were found not to exist, it said.
WTA-Advocates for Rural Broadband also opposes a reduction in A-CAM support when the model overestimates the number of serviceable locations. It said "its members are not just building out to locations, but they are building a lasting network that will be able to serve current and future locations in a service area." It said pro rata reductions in A-CAM support "would greatly cut into the funds needed to repay network construction loans as well as maintain and operate the underlying network as a whole." WTA said a carrier that builds a network capable of serving all or virtually all locations within a funded census block but finds its estimated funded locations exceed actual locations (through demographic changes or modeling errors) "must be permitted to reduce its number of funded locations down to the number of its actual locations" without penalty "because it cannot offer service to non-existent locations."
ITTA asked the FCC to adopt a flexible approach when providers find discrepancies in the number of locations they're able to identify for service. Rather than having to submit evidence of the total number of eligible locations they can identify within a year of an auction's closing public notice, ITTA said, A-CAM funding recipients "should have the option to raise location discrepancy issues with the Commission during the term of the A-CAM plan when they are further along in their broadband deployment schedules." ITTA argued "locations are bound to change" over the course of a 10-year or 12-year buildout term.
New building construction in the locations under question can affect the actual numbers of serviceable homes and businesses, ITTA noted; perhaps "even more common in rural areas, however, is the well-documented phenomenon of rural population loss." It said "severe natural disasters" can and have changed location dynamics "literally overnight." And because some of the data that A-CAM models use to determine location counts comes from the latest Census, the underlying data could be nearly two decades old by the time some A-CAM I deployment obligations are completed at the end of 2028, ITTA said.
Sacred Wind Communications urged the FCC to "recognize extenuating circumstances in Tribal areas where the number of actual eligible locations far exceeds the number of funded locations" and permit upward adjustment of A-CAM II support to match. Sacred Wind said it discovered a significant shortfall of funded locations relative to actual locations within its eligible census blocks, "largely Navajo residential communities that are unserved or underserved and not located within the study area of an unsubsidized competitor." It said the FCC's exclusion of thousands of locations in this example "has rendered them invisible to the Commission for purposes of bridging the digital divide in rural and Tribal areas."