Today’s blog covers an issue that gets my blood boiling every time I think about it. The FCC just announced increased testing for ISPs accepting funding from FCC High Cost programs, which includes CAF II and RDOF. The new rules include the following:

• The number of audits and verifications will double in 2022 compared to 2021 and will include some on-site audits.
• There will be more verification prior to the first required deployment milestone.
• Large dollar funding recipients will be subject to an on-site audit in at least one state.
• High-risk recipients will be subject to additional audits and verifications.
• Audit results, speed tests, and latency performance will now be posted online.

That all sounds good until you look at the practical results of the testing program. The worse that can happen to an ISP for failing the FCC tests will be to lose some small portion of any remaining funding.

Under current rules, ISPs can choose between three methods for testing. They may elect what the FCC calls the MBA program, which uses an external vendor approved by the FCC to perform the testing. ISPs can also use existing network tools if they are built into the customer CPE that allows test pinging and other testing methodologies. Finally, an ISP can install ‘white boxes’ that provide the ability to perform the tests. What’s not easy to dig out of the rules is that ISPs have a hand in deciding who gets tested.

In the past, the number of required tests was as follows. For award areas with 50 or fewer households the test was for 5 customers; for 51-500 households the test was 10% of households. For 500 or more households the test was 50 households. ISPs declaring a high latency had to test more locations with the maximum being 370. Doubling the testing probably means doubling the number of locations that are tested.

Tests for a given customer are done for a full week each quarter. Tests must be conducted in the evenings between 6:00 PM and 12:00 PM. Latency tests must be done every minute during the six-hour testing window. Speed tests, run separately for upload speeds and download speeds,  must be done once per hour during the 6-hour testing window.

ISPs are expected to meet latency standards 95% of the time. Speed tests must achieve 80% of the expected upland and download speed 80% of the time. An example of this requirement is that a carrier guaranteeing a gigabit of speed must achieve 800 Mbps 80% of the time. ISPs that meet the speeds and latencies for 100% of customers are excused from quarterly testing and only have to test once per year.

The real kicker of all of this is that the penalties for failing the tests have no teeth. The following financial penalties are applied only to the remaining subsidy payments:

• If between 85% and 100% of households meet the test standards, the ISP loses 5% of any remaining FCC support.
• If between 70% and 85% of households meet the test standards, the ISP loses 10% of future support.
• If between 55% and 75% of households meet the test standards, the ISP loses 15% of future FCC support.
• If less than 55% of households meet the test standard, the ISP loses 25% of their future support.

The penalties for an ISP that doesn’t perform on RDOF are minor. Consider a WISP that accepted $100 million of RDOF to build gigabit wireless but only delivers a few hundred Mbps speeds. The first chance for testing is in the third year of RDOF, where an ISP is required to have completed 40% of the buildout. My example WISP will fail more than 55% of speed tests and will incur the maximum FCC penalty. That means the ISP will collect $10 million in the first two years and $7.5 million in years 3 – 10. By the end of the 10-year payout, the ISP will still have collected $80 million of the original $100 million RDOF award. That is not much of a penalty for massive underperformance.

I think these weak penalties emboldened ISPS to lie about the speeds of their technologies in the RDOF auction. ISPs are still paid handsomely even if they don’t come close to meeting the promised speeds. And that’s not the entire story. There were bidding penalties for ISPs promising speeds slower than gigabit. A WISP that told the truth about speeds in the auction (and many did) likely lost in the auction if bidding directly against a WISP that exaggerated speeds.

These penalties are shameful and are another example of the FCC favoring ISPs over the public.  If an ISP whiffs the test in the third year they should stop receiving all future subsidies. If an ISP fail the tests badly enough, such as delivering 200 Mbps when promising a gigabit, then they ought to be forced to return 100% of the previous RDOF awards. If those were the rules, any ISPs that lied about speed capabilities would all withdraw from RDOF tomorrow.

People will ask why it’s so bad that an ISP that overstated speed capabilities won the RDOF. This cheats the people living in the RDOF award area. Residents thought they would get gigabit broadband and will get something far less. While customers might be pleased with the initial speeds in this example, the network being built is not ready to provide good broadband for the rest of the century. There is a good chance that in a decade or two we’ll be looking at these same award areas again and asking if these areas need more federal subsidy to swap out to a faster technology.

If an ISP takes big federal money and fails to perform there should be real penalties. If that was made clear upfront, then ISPs that can’t meet speed requirements would not be tempted to apply. One only has to look back at CAF II to see how ineffective this testing is. Does anybody remember any big penalties for the big telcos not upgrading DSL?