FCC Expected to Approve Broadband Mapping Item -- With Changes
The broadband mapping data collection order and Further NPRM proposed by Chairman Ajit Pai is expected to get some changes before a commissioner vote Thursday, FCC and industry officials told us. Foremost among them is a change to the maximum buffers for fiber deployments. Groups and companies told the FCC the 6,660-foot maximum buffer may not be appropriate for all technologies, especially in rural areas, and that for fiber deployments the distances are frequently much larger.
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CTIA and its largest carrier members raised concerns about collecting infrastructure information (see 2007070031). That also could be addressed, officials said. “Any collection of infrastructure information should uphold long-standing government policy that such sensitive infrastructure information is presumed confidential due to competitive and network security issues,” CTIA said. The wireless changes are less certain, officials said.
“The buffer issue is important because in many rural areas, homes and businesses can be located far apart, sometimes miles,” a Utilities Technology Council spokesperson emailed: “Maximum buffers like those envisioned in the draft, or what they had released earlier, are not appropriate for fiber in these rural areas.” The FCC got wide feedback about the buffers, from groups including USTelecom, NCTA, NTCA, ACA Connects, the UTC and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (see 2007100051).
“Because maximum wireline network deployment distances vary across technologies, providers, and locations, there is no single industry standard that will apply accurately to all wireline networks, or even to all cable networks, in all circumstances,” NCTA told aides to all five commissioners last week: “Adoption of the one-size-fits-all standard proposed in the draft order will result in less accurate maps that fail to reflect providers’ actual network deployment, contrary to the intent of both the Commission in revising its rules and of Congress in adopting” the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability Act.
“We hope that the FCC will address the concerns we’ve raised and solutions we’ve suggested as part of their vote on Thursday in order to make sure the maps appropriately reflect rural deployments,” an NTCA spokesperson said. Others referred us to their earlier filings in docket 19-195.
The agency is right to impose some limitations on the buffer zones because otherwise some companies may overreport coverage areas, said Jeffrey Westling, R Street Institute fellow. “Having a uniform approach to defining the buffer significantly increases the risk that areas already covered by existing operations will end up being reported as unserved because not all deployments or technologies are the same,” Westling told us: If the maps “artificially limit the area in which a provider can connect customers, then valuable federal and state universal service funding may go to the deployment of infrastructure to areas that already have access to an existing provider.”