The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Briefing.
FCC Chairman To Leave In January
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced he will leave the FCC on January 20, 2017. He issued a statement saying in part: “Serving as F.C.C. Chairman during this period of historic technological change has been the greatest honor of my professional life. I am deeply grateful to the President for giving me this opportunity. I am especially thankful to the talented Commission staff for their service and sacrifice during my tenure.” Read the full statement here.
FCC Frontier CAF Phase I Support
FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau set January 30, 2017, as the deadline for broadband providers to notify Frontier and the FCC that they provide broadband service of at least 3 Mbps/768 kbps in newly identified Frontier census blocks. On December 8, 2016, Frontier notified the FCC that it intends to further modify its Connect America Phase I Round 2 (Phase I) incremental broadband deployment plans and submitted a list of 515 census blocks that it had not previously identified with its initial election where it now intends to serve locations using Phase I incremental support. A machine readable list of the census blocks Frontier intends to serve is available here.
FCC Clarification Regarding ARC Imputation
The FCC has clarified that all rate of return ILECs that receive Connect America Fund support must impute an amount equal to their Access Recovery Charge (ARC) they assess on voice/broadband lines on their Consumer Broadband-only Loops. This is true whether the ILEC receives support through the new Connect America Fund Broadband Loop Support (CAF BLS) mechanism or the voluntary path to model-based support for those rate-of-return carriers (also known as the Alternative Connect America Cost Model, or A-CAM). The Order was issued in response to several inquiries on the subject due to a lack of clarity in the initial order and rules.
