Tag: Universal Service Fund

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

The FCC and USF

The FCC quietly won two court cases over the last month that most folks have not heard about. A group of complainants brought a suit against the FCC, saying that the agency didn’t have explicit direction from Congress for the creation of the Universal Service Fund (USF) or the authority to delegate the operation of the USF to a third party. Years ago, the FCC prompted the creation of the non-profit firm Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) to administer the day-to-day operations of the $10 billion fund.

The plaintiffs pleaded that the FCC didn’t have the constitutional authority to create the Universal Service Fund since that was not specifically spelled out by Congress. Specifically, plaintiffs argued that the FCC was violating the nondelegation doctrine, a legal principle that says that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to other entities.

The first ruling was issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the ruling came down squarely on the side of the FCC. The Court said that Section § 254 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 had given the FCC explicit authority to advance and preserve universal telecommunications service and that the agency’s decision to create the USF falls under that authority given to the FCC by Congress. A similar decision was recently reached by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Universal Service Fund has always been controversial, and this is not the first challenge to its authority. There are a lot of people who don’t think the FCC should effectively have the power to levy a tax on telecommunications services, the primary tool for funding the USF. The FCC is careful to call this a fee, but to folks who pay it, the distinction between a fee and a tax is hard to see.

The Courts also upheld the FCC’s right to delegate the administration of the Universal Service Fund to USAC. The courts noted that USAC is purely administrative and doesn’t have any authority to create rules. The rulings found that USAC makes proposals to the FCC on ideas for using the fund – ideas the FCC is free to ignore.

If the FCC had lost these cases, it would have been devastating to some highly popular programs. The most popular is probably the Schools and Libraries (E-Rate) program, where the FCC subsidizes fast Internet connection for schools that have a high percentage of low-income students. The USF also administers subsidies to get broadband to rural healthcare facilities and the Lifeline program that provides a discount on broadband bills.

Probably the most controversial use of the USF is the Connect America Fund which provides subsidies to support rural broadband. The fund was used for the CAF II program that was supposed to improve rural DSL for the largest telcos – at a time when DSL was already obsolete and copper wire maintenance was nonexistent. This money was used to create the often-criticized RDOF program that held a reverse auction for funds to support rural broadband. The FCC has been studying the use of the fund to build more rural cell towers.

The FCC is not entirely out of the woods, and there is one more similar challenge to its authority pending in the 11th Circuit Court. Historically, strong rulings like the first two would limit the chance of a different ruling in another court. However, it seems lately that courts are more independently making decisions that are not based on prior rulings.

It would be an interesting scenario if the FCC’s authority to operate the USF is ended. All current broadband subsidies would likely come to a screeching halt. It’s likely that at least a few states would leap in and fill such a void, but that would mean a plethora of subsidy programs by states – which also could be challenged. But it would also likely mean that many states would do nothing.

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

Funding the Universal Service Fund

The FCC’s Universal Service Fund (USF) has been a mainstay in the telecom industry since it was created in 1997 as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That Act explicitly ordered the FCC to adopt the following universal service principles – all of the FCC’s actions with the USF are derived from these simple principles.

  • Promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates.
  • Increase nationwide access to advanced telecommunications services.
  • Advance the availability of such services to all consumers, including those in low-income, rural, insular, and high-cost areas, at rates that are reasonably comparable to those charged in urban areas.
  • Increase access to telecommunications and advanced services in schools, libraries, and rural health care facilities.
  • Provide equitable and non-discriminatory contributions from all providers of telecommunications services for the fund supporting universal service programs

The size of the USF has remained stable over the last decade, with USF disbursements in 2012 of $8.7 billion and 2021 disbursements of $8.5 billion. The USF is funded by an assessment on interstate telecommunications services. This includes a variety of telecommunications services – with the largest source of funding being assessed in landline telephone service, interstate long-distance, cellular and texting services, interstate private lines, and a host of smaller telecommunications services.

The USF is facing a big challenge because keeping the size of the USF stable has been an ever-increasing burden on those paying into the fund since interstate services have been steadily declining. To put this into perspective, the assessment on interstate services was 16.7% in the first quarter of 2017 and grew to 33% in the third quarter of 2022.

In the IIJA legislation, Congress ordered the FCC to take a fresh look at the USF. It ordered the agency to explore both the uses of the USF and the sources of USF funding.

The FCC reported back to Congress as ordered, and the FCC largely said that it still believes that its uses of the USF funding are appropriate and should continue into the future. There are critics of many of the functions funded by the USF, such as the 2020 RDOF reverse auction, but there is nearly universal support of programs like supporting broadband for schools and rural healthcare.

As part of the review of the USF, the FCC considered two funding ideas:

  • One of the easiest ways to spread the costs of funding the USF would be to expand the assessments to include broadband. This would lower the assessment rate from 33% to some tiny amount depending on how the assessment for broadband is calculated.
  • The FCC also explored the idea of assessing USF to “edge providers,” which are the large Internet firms such as streaming video providers, digital advertising firms, and cloud services companies – companies like Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon. This would shift most of the burden for funding the USF from the public to businesses – although businesses typically pass USF fees back to the public. But edge providers that offer free services like Facebook, Twitter, and Google search would have to eat the cost of such assessments.

The FCC decided not to take a position on the two funding ideas. The report to Congress said that the agency probably doesn’t have the authority to expand the USF assessment to these two groups of payers. The FCC thinks that Congress would have to act to change the method of USF assessments.

It will be interesting to see if Congress decides to take up the USF issue. One of the key issues facing Congress will be deciding if it wants to fund and continue the ACP program that provides a $30 discount from broadband for low-income homes. Congress assigned the operation of that fund to USAC, a non-profit organization that works under FCC guidance to operate the USF.

I have to think there are those in Congress that take exception to the FCC’s assessment that it is using the USF wisely. There are a lot of critics of recent programs like CAF II and RDOF. There have been plenty of critics of the Lifeline program, and I assume there are those against continuing the ACP low-income discounts. One of the risks that the FCC faces is that Congress might decide to resize or eliminate programs if it takes up the issue.

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

The Future of the Universal Service Fund

The FCC adopted a Notice of Inquiry on December 15 that asks for comments about the future of the Universal Service Fund. There is not a lot of time to respond with the holidays in the middle since comments are due on January 18. But the NOI is asking the right questions.

High-Cost Programs. On the topic of the High-cost programs, it asks how the giant BEAD grants will impact the future of the FCC broadband awards. It asks if there should be an additional round of RDOF. It asks if some of the highest-cost areas constructed with the BEAD grants will need ongoing high-cost support. It asks if the FCC should adopt a standard of 100/20 Mbps as a requirement for future high-cost support. It asks about the use of future reverse auctions.

Lifeline. The NOI asks about the future of the existing Lifeline fund in light of the funding given to the EBB program and now to the ACP program that provides a larger monthly broadband subsidy.

E-Rate. The NOI asks if the E-Rate program for schools and libraries should be changed due to anything that came out of the Infrastructure Act. It asks about ways to protect against waste, fraud, and abuse.

Rural Health Care. The NOI asks if the program changes due to telehealth funding in the Infrastructure Act.

Funding. The NOI asks if the method of funding the USF should be changed.

I’ve written about all of these questions before. Here are a few quick thoughts I have on these questions – each question deserves a much longer response:

The FCC’s high-cost funding has outlived its usefulness. While this funding did a lot of good and helped telcos build rural fiber, it also made some telco owners rich through overpayments. The overpayments became obscene when the FCC gave $11 billion in CAF II funding to the big telcos and then ignored the reports that upgrades weren’t being done. The RDOF reverse auction is a giant mess and will turn into a disaster if the FCC doesn’t soon kill off unworthy awards in favor of BEAD grants. It’s time to kill this program completely, get the FCC out of the broadband funding business, and downsize the USF accordingly. The need for broadband funding can always be revisited in a decade if some rural places still need ongoing support. But even revisiting the idea is suspect because the FCC is always going to rely on poor mapping and inadequate cost models to determine who gets funded.

The $9.95 Lifeline fund still has some use to support cellphone for homeless and other forgotten communities. But the monthly subsidy is too small to make home broadband more affordable. The FCC should either re-purpose the Lifeline fund to strictly support low-income cellphones or kill the program.

The E-Rate program provides noticeable benefits to schools and has brought gigabit broadband to some of the poorest parts of the country. I’ve never heard anything but good about the Rural Health Care funding.

As far as funding – if the High-cost fund and Lifeline programs are curtailed or eliminated then the amount of needed funding drops drastically. But I think a more fundamental question needs to be asked. Why is the FCC still being allowed to operate a giant slush fund? A huge percentage of the funding over the years has gone to the big ISPs. The USF has been riddled with stories of abuse and fraud. The primary problem with the USF is that regulators are trying to run national one-size-fits-all programs without the needed facts or staffing to do it right. I think it’s time to have a conversation about ending the Universal Service Fund. The E-Rate and Rural Health Care programs are successful, but they are something that should be funded by Congress. Let’s get regulators out of the funding business and aim the agency back towards their primary goal of regulating the broadband industry – instead of funding the companies the FCC is supposed to be overseeing.

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

Expanding the Universal Service Fund

A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress that would expand the size of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund by adding a fee on top of broadband bills. This fund is currently funded by fees added to landline telephone and cellular bills. The USF assessment on Interstate traffic recently increased to 26.5% – which is an extraordinarily high tax.

The bill was introduced by Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Don Young (R-Alaska). Also sponsoring the bill are T.J. Cox (D-Cal.), Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Frank Lucas (R-Oklahoma), Luis Correa (D-Cal.) Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), Ed Case (D- Hawaii), and Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas).

I’ve been advocating this for a decade because the Universal Service Fund is the FCC’s only tool to tackle the rural broadband issue. The USF already does a lot of good. The Fund is used to bring affordable gigabit broadband to schools. It’s used to bring affordable broadband to rural health care facilities. And even though the FCC keeps fighting it, the USF is used to hold down broadband bills for low-income households, with the Lifeline program that makes ISPs whole for providing lower prices.

In the past the Fund was used to fund two large-dollar broadband expansion projects – one successful and one a total bust. The successful program was ACAM, which has provided the funding to build rural fiber networks by small telcos. I see people around the industry praising the rural broadband in states like North and South Dakota – and that fiber was largely funded by the ACAM program.

Unfortunately, the USF doesn’t always get used wisely. This was the source of funding for the CAF II program that handed $11 billion to the big telcos to ostensively upgrade rural broadband speeds to 10/1 Mbps. It appears that money was largely frittered away or pocketed by the telcos because it’s still hard to find rural households with DSL speeds of 10/1 Mbps. The entire project basically shoveled billions to the bottom line of the telcos.

The Universal Service Fund is about to be used again in big ways. USF is the source of the $16.4 RDOF grants that will be awarded later this year, with another $4 billion to be awarded next year. Assuming this reverse auction doesn’t go cockeyed by awarding money to satellite providers instead of fiber networks, then this will be the biggest boost to rural broadband ever. I’ve been working with a lot of ISPs planning to use this money to build fiber in rural counties all over the country.

The Universal Service Fund is also the source of the proposed $9 billion 5G Fund with a goal of bringing cellular coverage to everybody in the US. Again, assuming the FCC does this right, this would make it a lot easier to live in rural America. Done poorly, this could instead line the pockets of the giant cellular companies.

What nobody is talking about is that those two programs – the RDOF grants and the 5G Fund will use all of the dry powder in the Universal Service Fund. These programs will both award funding over 10 years, and if we don’t find a new source of funding, there will be no additional big grants coming from the USF for the next decade.

What’s even scarier is that the revenues into the Universal Service Fund are dropping as people continue to drop landline telephones. Without some bolstering, there is no assurance that future FCCs will be able to meet the obligations to the recipients of the RDOF and 5G grants.

The revenue impact of imposing a $1 fee on broadband connections is gigantic. There are currently around 106 million broadband customers in the US. A $1 monthly fee on broadband would add $1.3 billion annually to the USF, or over $13 billion over the next decade. That would allow for another big rural broadband grant program.

The members of Congress sponsoring this bill seem to trust the FCC to disperse grant funding. Honestly, their track record on choosing winning grants is mixed. There are also plenty of policy people who think we should take every step possible to keep broadband affordable and that even a $1 monthly fee helps to push broadband out of the affordability range for homes.

If the Universal Service Fund is not expanded, then the only other source for funding rural broadband is Congress. There is a lot of talk about broadband funding coming out of the various COVID-19 stimulus packages. But if that doesn’t happen, we are likely facing an economy with a lot of problems for the next few years. In that environment, rural broadband funding might get shuttled behind other priorities.

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

Auditing the Universal Service Fund

I recently heard FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks speak to the Broadband Communities meeting in Alexandria, Virginia. He expressed support for finding broadband solutions and cited several examples of communities that don’t have good broadband access today – both due to lack of connectivity and due to the lack of affordable broadband.

One of his more interesting comments is that he wants the FCC to undertake a ‘data-driven’ analysis of the effectiveness of the Universal Service Fund over the last ten years. He wants to understand where the fund has succeeded and where it has failed. Trying to somehow measure the effectiveness of the USF sounds challenging. I can think of numerous successes and failures of USF funding, but I also know of a lot of situations that I would have a hard time classifying as a success or failure.

Consider some of the challenges of looking backward. Over the last decade, the definition of broadband has changed from 4/1 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps. Any USF funds that supported the older speeds will look obsolete and inadequate today. Was using USF funding nine years ago to support slow broadband by today’s standards a success or a failure?

One of the biggest challenges of undertaking data-driven analysis is that the FCC didn’t gather the needed data over time. For example, there has only been a limited amount of speed testing done by the FCC looking at the performance of networks built with USF funding. A more rigorous set of testing starts over the next few years, but I think even the new testing won’t tell the FCC what they need to know. For example, the FCC just changed the rules to let the big telcos off the hook when they decided that USF recipients can help to decide which customers to test. The big telcos aren’t going to test where they didn’t build upgrades or where they know they can’t meet the FCC speed requirements.

The FCC will find many successes from USF funding. I’m aware of many rural communities that have gotten fiber that was partially funded by the ACAM program. These communities will have world-class broadband for the rest of this century. But ACAM money was also used in other places to build 25/3 DSL. I’m sure the rural homes that got this DSL are thankful because it’s far better than what they had before. But will they be happy in a decade or two as their copper networks approach being a century old? Are the areas that got the DSL a success or a failure?

Unfortunately, there are obvious failures with USF funding. Many of the failures come from the inadequate mapping that influenced USF funding decisions. There are millions of households for which carriers have been denied USF funding because the homes have been improperly classified as having broadband when they do not. Commissioner Stark said he was worried about using these same maps for the upcoming RDOF grants – and he should be.

Possibly the biggest failures come from what I call lack of vision by the FCC. The biggest example of this is when they awarded $11 billion to fund the CAF II program for the big telcos, requiring 10/1 Mbps speeds at a time when the FCC had already declared broadband to be 25/3 Mbps. That program was such a failure that the CAF II areas will be eligible for overbuilding using the RDOF grants, barely after the upgrades are slated to be completed. The Universal Service Fund should only support building broadband to meet future speed needs and not today’s needs. This FCC is likely to repeat this mistake if they award the coming RDOF grants to provide 25/3 Mbps speeds – a speed that’s arguably inadequate today and that clearly will be inadequate by the time the RDOF networks are completed seven years from now.

I hope the data-driven analysis asks the right questions. Again, consider CAF II. I think there are huge numbers of homes in the CAF II service areas where the big telcos made no upgrades, or upgraded to speeds far below 10/1 Mbps. I know that some of the big telcos didn’t even spend much of their CAF II funding and pocketed it as revenue. Is the audit going to look deep at such failures and take an honest look at what went wrong?

Commissioner Stark also mentioned the Lifeline program as a failure due to massive fraud. I’ve followed the Lifeline topic closely for years and the fraud has been nowhere near the magnitude that is being claimed by some politicians. Much of the blame for problems with the program came from the FCC because there was never any easy way for telcos to check if customers remained eligible for the program. The FCC is in the process of launching such a database – something that should have been done twenty years ago. The real travesty of the Lifeline program is that the big telcos have walked away. For example, AT&T has stopped offering Lifeline in much of its footprint. The FCC has also decided to make it exceedingly difficult for ISPs to join the program, and I know of numerous ISPs that would love to participate.

I try not to be cynical, and I hope an ‘audit’ isn’t just another way to try to kill the Lifeline program but is instead an honest effort to understand what has worked and not worked in the past. An honest evaluation of the fund’s problems will assign the blame for many of the fund’s problems to the FCC, and ideally, that would stop the current FCC from repeating the mistakes of the past.

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

Funding the USF

The Universal Service Fund (USF) has a bleak future outlook if the FCC continues to ignore the funding crisis that supports the program. The fund continues to be funded with a fee levied against the combined Interstate and international portion of landlines, cellphones and certain kinds of traditional data connections sold by the big telcos. The ‘tax’ on Interstate services has grown to an indefensible 25% of the retail cost of the Interstate and international portion of these products.

The FCC maintains arcane rules to determine the interstate portion of things like a local phone bill or a cellular bill. There are only a tiny handful of consultants that specialize in ‘separations’ – meaning the separation of costs into jurisdictions – who understand the math behind the FCC’s determination of the base for assessing USF fees.

The USF has done a lot of good in the past and is poised to do even more. The segment of the program that brings affordable broadband to poor schools and libraries is a success in communities across the country. The USF is also used to subsidize broadband to non-profit rural health clinics and hospitals. I would argue that the Lifeline program that provides subsidized phone service has done a huge amount of good. The $9.25 per month savings on a phone or broadband bill isn’t as effective today as it once was because the subsidy isn’t pegged to inflation. But I’ve seen firsthand the benefits from this plan that provided low-cost cellphones to the homeless and connected them to the rest of society. There are numerous stories of how the subsidized cellphones helped homeless people find work and integrate back into society.

The biggest potential benefit of the fund is bringing broadband solutions to rural homes that still aren’t connected to workable broadband. We’ve gotten a hint of this potential in some recent grant programs, like the recent CAF II reverse auction. We’re ready to see the USF create huge benefits as the FCC starts awarding $20.4 billion in grants from the USF, to be dispersed starting in 2021. If that program is administered properly then huge numbers of homes are going to get real broadband.

This is not to say that the USF hasn’t had some problems. There are widespread stories about fraud in the Lifeline program, although many of those stories have been exaggerated in the press. A decent amount of what was called fraud was due to the ineptitude of the big phone companies that continued to collect USF funding for people who die or who are no longer eligible for the subsidy. The FCC has taken major steps to fix this problem by creating a national database of those who are eligible for the Lifeline program.

The biggest recent problem with the USF came when the FCC used the fund to award $11 billion to the big telcos in the CAF II program to upgrade rural broadband to speeds of at least 10/1 Mbps. I’ve heard credible rumors that some of the telcos pocketed much of that money and only made token efforts to tweak rural DSL speeds up to a level that households still don’t want to buy. It’s hard to find anybody in the country who will defend this colossal boondoggle.

However, we’ve learned that if used in a smart way that the USF can be used to bring permanent broadband to rural America. Every little pocket of customers that gets fiber due to this funding can be taken off the list of places with no broadband alternatives. Areas that get fixed wireless are probably good for a decade or more, and hopefully, those companies operating these networks will pour profits back into bringing fiber (which I know some USF fund recipients are doing).

But the USF is in real trouble if the FCC doesn’t fix the funding solution. As traditional telephone products with an interstate component continue to disappear the funds going into the USF will shrink. If the funding shrinks, the FCC is likely to respond by cutting awards. Somebody might win $1 million from the upcoming grant program but then collect something less as the fund decreases over time.

The fix for the USF is obvious and easy. If the FCC expands the funding base to include broadband products, the percentage contribution would drop significantly from the current 25% and the fund could begin growing again. The current FCC has resisted this idea vigorously and it’s hard to ascribe any motivation other than that they want to see the USF Fund shrink over time. This FCC hates the Lifeline program and would love to kill it. This FCC would prefer to not be in the business of handing out grants. At this point, I don’t think there is any alternative other than waiting for the day when there is a new FCC in place that embraces the good done by the USF rather than fight against it.

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Improving Your Business Regulation - What is it Good For?

Consider Rural Health Care Funding

One of the sources of the Universal Service Fund that often is forgotten is the Rural Health Care Program. The FCC recently carried forward $83.2 million that was unspent in 2018 into the 2019 funding pool. In June Chairman Ajit Pai proposed to raise the annual cap on this fund from $400 million to $571 million. That’s where this fund would have been today had the original fund been indexed by inflation since it was started in 1997. He also proposes that the cap on this Fund grow by inflation in the future.

I have a lot of clients who help their customers benefit from the Schools and Libraries Fund, but many of them never think about doing the same thing with the Rural Health Care Fund.

The Rural Health Care Program provides funding to eligible health care providers for broadband and voice services. Eligible health care providers must be either a public or a non-profit entity. The funds can be used for entities such as 1) educational institutions offering post-secondary medical instruction, teaching hospitals and medical schools; 2) community health centers providing care to migrants; 3) local health departments; 4) community mental health centers; 5) non-profit hospitals; 6) rural health clinics; 7) skilled nursing facilities; and 8) consortiums of providers that include one or more of the preceding list.

This program is comprised of two programs: The Healthcare Connect Fund Program and the Telecommunications Program. The Healthcare Connect Program provides support for high-speed broadband connections. Eligible entities can receive as much as a 65% discount on monthly broadband bills for services like Internet access, dark fiber, or traditional telco data services. This works a lot like the E-Rate program for Schools and Library program. The health care facility pays the reduced rate for service and the partner ISP can collect the discount from the Universal Service Fund.

The health care providers can also ask for assistance with telecommunications equipment and can use the funds to help pay for the construction of fiber facilities. This funding can be an interesting way for a rural ISP to get some assistance for paying for a fiber route to reach a health care facility (and then use that fiber to also serve other customers).

The Telecommunications Program works a little differently. In that program the health care facility can buy broadband and telecommunication services at rates that are reasonably comparable to rates charged for similar services in nearby urban areas. That’s likely to mean discounts smaller than the 65% in the Healthcare Connect program. Functionally this still works the same and the ISP can collect the difference between the urban rates and the rural rates.

Just like with E-Rate, the health care provider must apply for this funding. But also like E-Rate, it’s typical for an ISP to help prepare the paperwork. The paperwork will feel familiar to any ISP already participating in an E-Rate situation.

It’s obvious that since $83.2 million is being carried over from 2018 that rural health care providers are not all taking full advantage of this program. I see articles all of the time decrying a crisis in rural health care due to the high costs of providing services in rural America. This program can bring subsidized broadband connection to health care facilities at a time when that is likely a welcome relief.

This funding has been available for a long time, yet I rarely hear clients talking about it. I’m guessing most rural ISPs have never participated although there are likely eligible health care facilities nearby. This likely will require some training for potential customers. School and library associations have done a good job at alerting their members that this subsidy exists – but I’m guessing the same has not been done with rural health care providers. An ISP willing to tackle the filings can gain a great customer while also benefitting their community.

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

Designing the Ideal Federal Broadband Grant Program

In April, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced a new rural broadband initiative that will provide $20.4 billion of new funding. We don’t know many details yet, but here are a few things that will likely be involved in awarding the funding:

  • The FCC is leaning towards a reverse auction.
  • The program will likely require technologies that can deliver at least 25/3 Mbps broadband speeds.
  • The program will be funded within the existing Universal Service Fund, mostly by repositioning the original CAF II plan.
  • The grants might all be awarded at once, similar to A-CAM and CAF II awards, meaning that there might be only one chance to apply, with the awards to be paid out over a longer time period.

I’m writing a series of blogs that will examine the ideal way to design and administer a grant program of this size. We’ve seen both good and also disastously bad federal broadband programs before, and i’m hoping the FCC will take some time to make this grant program one of the effective ones. I’m sure the details of this new program are not yet set in stone, and folks in rural America need to make their voices heard now if they want some of this money to benefit their communities.

I’m going to look at the following topics, and perhaps more as I write this. At the end of this process I’ll post a whitepaper on my website that consolidates all of these discussions into one document.

A well-designed broadband grant program of this magnitude should consider the following:

What is the End Goal?

It’s important up-front for the FCC to determine how the grant moneys are to be used. The best grant programs have a specific goal, and then the application and award process is designed to best meet the goals. The goal can’t be something as simple as ‘promote rural broadband’, because a goal that simplistic is bound to create a hodgepodge of grant awards.

What Broadband Speeds Should be Supported?

This is an area where the FCC failed miserably in the past. They awarded over $11 billion in the CAF II program that was used to upgrade broadband speeds to speeds of only 10/1 Mbps. When the FCC set the 10/1 Mbps speed that didn’t even meet their own definition of broadband. How should the FCC determine eligible speeds this time to avoid a repeat of the CAF II debacle?

Who Should be Eligible?

FCC programs in the past have usually made the monies available to a wide range of recipients. However, the specific details of the grant programs have often made it hard for whole classes of entities like cities or counties to accept the awards. As an example, there are many entities electing to not participate in the current Re-Connect grant program because they can’t accept any part of the awards that include RUS loans.

Is a Reverse Auction the Right Mechanism?

The FCC and numerous politicians currently favor reverse auctions. Like any mechanism, there are situation where reverse grants are a great tool and others where they will distort the award process. Are reverse auctions a good tool for this grant program?

Other Issues

There are two drastically different ways to hand out these grants. One is to follow the CAF II mechanism and award all of the $20 billion in one huge auction and then pay it out over 6 or 8 years. The other would be to divide the award money into even tranches and have a new grant award for each of those years.

In the recent Re-Connect grants the FCC decided to blend grants and loans. I know the loan component stopped most of my clients from pursuing these grants. Should there be a loan component of the grants?

There are also technical issues to consider. I had clients who were outbid in the recent CAF II reverse auction by wireless companies that gained bidding preference by promising that their fixed wireless networks could achieve across-the-board 100 Mbps broadband. I still don’t know of a wireless technology that can do that over a large footprint. How should the FCC make sure that technologies deliver what’s promised?

What’s the Role of States in this Process?

What should states be doing to maximize the chance for federal grant money to be awarded to their state?

This blog is part of a series:

Setting the Right Goals for Grants

Speed Goals for FCC Grants

Who Should be Eligible for Grants?

Are Reverse Auctions the Right Mechanism?

What Technology Should be Covered?

State’s Role in Broadband Grants

Summary and Conclusions

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

$20.4 Billion in Broadband Funding?

Chairman Ajit Pai and the White House announced a new rural broadband initiative that will provide $20.4 billion over ten years to expand and upgrade rural broadband. There were only a few details in the announcement, and even some of them sound tentative. A few things are probably solid:

  • The money would be used to provide broadband in the price-cap service areas – these are the areas served by the giant telcos.
  • The FCC is leaning towards a reverse auction.
  • Will support projects that deliver at least 25/3 Mbps broadband.
  • Will be funded from the Universal Service Fund and will ‘repurpose’ existing funds.
  • The announcement alludes to awarding the money later this year, which would be incredibly aggressive.
  • This was announced in conjunction with the auction of millimeter wave spectrum – however this is not funded from the proceeds of that auction.

What might it mean to repurpose this from the Universal Service Fund?  The fund dispersed $8.7 billion in 2018. We know of two major upcoming changes to the USF disbursements. First. the new Mobility II fund to bring rural 4G service adds $453 million per year to the USF. Second. the original CAF II program that pays $1.544 billion annually  to the big telcos ends after 2020.

The FCC recently increased the cap on the USF to $11.4 billion. Everybody was scratching their head over that cap since it is so much higher than current spending. But now the number makes sense. If the FCC was to award $2.04 billion in 2020 for the new broadband spending, the fund would expand almost to that new cap. Then, in 2021 the fund would come back down to $9.6 billion after the end of CAF II. We also know that the Lifeline support subsidies have been shrinking every year and the FCC has been eyeing further cuts in that program. We might well end up with a fund by 2021 that isn’t much larger than the fund in 2018.

There are some obviously big things we don’t know. The biggest is the timing of the awards. Will this be a one-time auction for the whole $20.4 billion or a new $2 billion auction for each of the next ten years? This is a vital question. If there is an auction every year then every rural county will have a decent shot at the funding. That will give counties time to develop business plans and create any needed public private partnership to pursue the funding.

However, if the funding is awarded later this year in one big auction and then disbursed over ten years, then I predict that most of the money will go again to the big telcos – this would be a repeat of the original CAF II. That is my big fear. There was great excitement in rural America for the original CAF II program, but in the end that money was all given to the big telcos. The big telcos could easily promise to improve rural DSL to 25/3 Mbps given this kind of funding. They’d then have ten years to fulfill that promise. I find it worrisome that the announcement said that the funding could benefit around 4 million households – that’s exactly the number of households covered by the big telcos in CAF II.

What will be the study areas? The CAF II program awarded funding by county. Big study areas benefit the big telcos since anybody else chasing the money would have to agree to serve the same large areas. Big study areas means big projects which will make it hard for many ISPs to raise any needed matching finds for the grants – large study areas would make it impossible for many ISPs to bid.

My last concern is how the funds will be administered. For example, the current ReConnect funding is being administered by the RUS which is part of the Department of Agriculture. That funding is being awarded as part grants and part loans. As I’ve written many times, there are numerous entities that are unable to accept RUS loans. There are features of those loans that are difficult for government entities to accept. It’s also hard for a commercial ISP to accept RUS funding if they already carry debt from some other source. The $20.4 billion is going to be a lot less impressive if a big chunk of it is loans. It’s going to be disastrous if loans follow the RUS lending rules.

We obviously need to hear a lot more. This could be a huge shot in the arm to rural broadband if done properly – exactly the kind of boost that we need. It could instead be another huge giveaway to the big telcos – or it could be something in between. I know I tend to be cynical, but I can’t ignore that some of the largest federal broadband funding programs have been a bust. Let’s all hope my worries are unfounded.

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Regulation - What is it Good For?

Capping the Universal Service Fund

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai recently suggested capping the size of the total Universal Service Fund at $11.4 annually, adjusted going forward for inflation. The chairman has taken a lot of flack on this proposal from advocates of rural broadband. Readers of this blog know that I have been a big critic of this FCC on a whole host of issues. However, this idea doesn’t ive me much heartburn.

Critics of the idea are claiming that this proves that the FCC isn’t serious about fixing the rural broadband problem. I totally agree with that sentiment and this current FCC hasn’t done very little to fix rural broadband. In fact, they’ve gone out of their way to try to hide the magnitude of the rural problem by fiddling with broadband statistics and by hiding behind the faulty data from carriers that come out of the FCC’s broadband mapping effort. My personal guess is that there are millions of more homes that don’t have broadband than are being counted by the FCC.

With that said, the Universal Service Fund shouldn’t be the sole funding source for fixing rural broadband. The fund was never intended for that. The fund was created originally to promote the expansion of rural telephone service. Over time it became the mechanism to help rural telcos survive as other sources of subsidies like access charges were reduced over time. Only in recent years was it repositioned to fund rural broadband.

Although I’m a big proponent for better rural broadband, I am not bothered by capping the Universal Service Fund. First, the biggest components of that fund have been capped for years. The monies available for the rural high cost program, the schools and library fund and for rural healthcare have already been capped. Second, the proposed cap is a little larger than what’s being spent today, and what has been spent historically. This doesn’t look to be a move by the FCC to take away funding from any existing program.

Consumers today fund the Universal Service Fund through fees levied against landline telephone and cellphones. Opponents of capping the fund apparently would like to see the FCC hike those fees to help close the rural broadband gap. As a taxpayer I’m personally not nuts about the idea of letting federal agencies like the FCC print money by raising taxes that we all pay. For the FCC to make any meaningful dent in the rural broadband issue they’d probably have to triple or quadruple the USF fees.

I don’t think there is a chance in hell that Congress would ever let the FCC do that – and not just this Congress, but any Congress. Opponents of Pai’s plan might not recall that past FCCs have had this same deliberation and decided that they didn’t have the authority to unilaterally increase the size of the USF fund.

If we want to federal government to help fix the rural broadband problem, unfortunately the only realistic solution is for Congress to appropriate real money to the effort. This particular Congress is clearly in the pocket of the big telcos, evidenced by the $600 million awarded for rural broadband in last year’s budget reconciliation process. The use of those funds was crippled by language inserted by the big telcos to make it hard to use the money to compete against the telcos.

And that’s the real issue with federal funding. We all decry that we have a huge rural broadband crisis, but what we really have is a big telco crisis. Every rural area that has crappy broadband is served by one of the big telcos. The big telcos stopped making investments to modernize rural networks decades ago. And yet they still have to political clout to block federal money from being used to compete against their outdated and dying networks.

The FCC does have an upcoming opportunity for funding a new broadband program from the Universal Service Fund. After 2020 nearly $2 billion annually will be freed up in the fund at the end of the original CAF II program. If this FCC is at serious about rural broadband the FCC should start talking this year about what to do with those funds. This is a chance for Chairman Pai to put his (USF) money where his mouth is.

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