FCC Releases Results of Initial Review of CAF Phase II Challenges

            On September 26, 2014, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or “the Commission”) released a Public Notice with the results of its initial review of the Connect America Fund (“CAF”) Phase II challenges.  The first round in the CAF Phase II challenge process allowed parties to argue that census blocks that have been designated as “unserved” should be designated as “served” by unsubsidized voice and broadband providers and would therefore be ineligible for CAF funding.  Likewise, price cap carriers were also allowed to argue that census blocks currently designated as being “served” by an unsubsidized voice and broadband provider should be designated as “unserved” and therefore the price cap carrier in that census block would be eligible to receive CAF funding.

In the Public Notice, the Commission provided two lists of census blocks where it determined that the filing party made a sufficient first showing to reclassify that census block as being either “served” or “unserved” by an unsubsidized competitor offering qualifying voice and broadband service. 

Service providers that offer voice and broadband, and have plant located near or within a price cap carrier’s service area should check the Commission’s list to see if the areas they serve have now been deemed as “unserved” by the FCC’s initial review.  If a service provider finds that the area they serve is now included in the Commission’s list as “unserved,” they have until December 10, 2014 to challenge the Commission’s initial finding by submitting evidence rebutting the evidence submitted by the challenging party.

            If you have any questions about the CAF Phase II Challenge process, please contact Bruce Beard at (314) 394-1535 or bbeard@cinnamonmueller.com or Noah Cherry at (202) 872-0234 or ncherry@cinnamonmueller.com.

FCC Releases Rural Broadband Experiment Application Form; Delays the Application Deadline

            The FCC released a Public Notice on September 26, 2014, announcing the electronic application, Form 5610, for its Rural Broadband Experiments.  Screen shots of the form can be found here.  The Commission also announced that it is delaying the application deadline for the Rural Broadband Experiments in order to test the electronic submission system.  The original deadline was October 14, 2014.  That deadline is expected to be pushed back four to six weeks, with a new deadline to be announced through a public notice.

            The Rural Broadband Experiments will competitively disperse up to $100 million in CAF funding to support broadband infrastructure deployment in price cap territories currently unserved by a provider offering both voice and broadband.  Entities will be selected solely on the cost effectiveness of their application, i.e. who can serve the most number of unserved locations using the least amount of CAF funding.

            Additionally, the FCC announced that it will hold a webinar to give instructions on completing the application form on October 9, at 2 p.m. EST.  Parties interested in attending the webinar should email RBEwebinar@fcc.gov to register. 

            If you have any questions about the Rural Broadband Experiments, please contact Bruce Beard at (314) 394-1535 or bbeard@cinnamonmueller.com or Noah Cherry at (202) 872-0234 or ncherry@cinnamonmueller.com.

FCC Form 477 Filing Deadline Extended Due to Technical Difficulties

            Due to technical difficulties that made the Form 477 online filing interface unavailable, the FCC announced that the deadline for filing Form 477 will be extended beyond the original October 1, 2014 deadline.  The new deadline will be announced via a public notice once the FCC has fixed the technical difficulties.

As a reminder, this is the first Form 477 filing requiring the use of the new filing interface on the FCC’s website.  Filers must now submit various types of data by type of service and provider.  For fixed broadband providers, Form 477 now requires the submission of:

• Deployment data on a census block basis, along with the maximum guaranteed or contractual upstream and downstream bandwidth offered.
• Subscription data on a census tract basis, along with the maximum advertised upstream and downstream bandwidth offered.

For both deployment and subscription data, fixed broadband providers must break out the information by the type of service (e.g., cable modem, fixed wireless).  In other words, if a broadband Internet access service provider offers multiple types of broadband technologies in one census tract, the filer is required to complete separate census tract entries for each technology. 

Interconnected VoIP providers must now also report subscription data on a census tract and state-by-state basis. 

Updated instructions for filers can be found here.  Filers can also review a brief summary of the Form 477 changes on the FCC’s website. 

If you have any questions about Form 477, please contact Scott Friedman at (312) 372-3930 or sfriedman@cinnamonmueller.com.