At 11/28/2012 05:56 PM, Blair Davis wrote:
For a one time payment of $775 per home, I can connect ALL the
unconnected homes in my county...
But that is not how it works, is it?
Alas, Phase I is for incumbents only.
Phase II, when it happens next year, will allow others to bid. This
will probably not be a one-time capital subsidy (which is not how USF
normally works) but the more routine monthly subsidy, which is
typically used to pay off RUS loans.
Just who is eligible to bid on Phase is not determined yet.
I'll be buried in red tape and paper for the rest of my life,
right? And, of course, since I took their money, they can now tell
me how to run my network and so on...
That would be a problem. The rural ILECs who live on USF have staff
or consultants to handle it for them. It's their main business,
after all; running the network is secondary.
I'd be happy if I can just block everyone else in my county from getting it.
If you're on the map with 3/.768, you're probably okay. Those who
are not on the map should follow Rich's advice; there are ways to
make it fairly easy.
On 11/28/2012 5:16 PM, Fred Goldstein wrote:
The FCC's home page ( transition.fcc.gov ) has an item about Connect
America Fund, posted with no description. This turns out to be a
further NPRM about Phase I funding.
As you may recall, CAF Phase I was the short-term (2012) step that
offered $775 per line to price-cap ILECs (the Bells and other big
ones) to bring "broadband" to "unserved" areas that they otherwise
wouldn't. It was budgeted for $300M but only about $115M was claimed,
mostly by Frontier. The Bells didn't take much. CenturyLink however
whined that the definition of "served" should be changed to
specifically exclude areas WISPs, so they could get subsidy money to
overbuild existing WISPs. The FCC turned that one down, though
CenturyLink did take money for some other areas.
The new Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking:
<http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2012/db1119/FCC-12-138A1.pdf>http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2012/db1119/FCC-12-138A1.pdf
asks what to do about the remaining Phase I money. While they could
of course just not spend it, lowering the USF tax (now around 17%!),
that's not one of the two options they are proposing to select
from. One option is to simply add this funding to Phase II, which
begins in 2013. Phase II allows for competition in the awarding of
funds; there will be a reverse auction, and the bidder who asks for
the least subsidy money gets it.
Most of the FNPRM, however, is devoted to the other option,
essentially a second round of Phase I. They propose changing Phase I
rules to encourage the ILECs to take more money. There are a lot of
questions about details, but the basic ideas are along these lines:
1) Redefine "unserved" to be anywhere that doesn't have 4/1 service,
vs. 768k/200k in the first round. This would be based on the
National Broadband Map, using 3M/768k as a surrogate for 4/1. (The
agencies apparently hadn't agreed on speed tiers.) So an area served
by a WISP at 2M/500k, or by Canopy 100s, would be deemed "unserved",
since it's not 4/1.
2) Allow challenges to the national map. So if an ILEC thinks an
area is unserved even if a WISP claims it's served, they can argue
the matter to the FCC. This works both ways, so I suppose an ISP
could claim that the map omitted them by mistake. But it points out
that a WISP SHOULD MAKE SURE ITS COVERAGE AREAS ARE ON THE
MAP! (Just a little shouting in case anyone didn't hear it.)
They are supposed to come out with a list of unserved areas (census
blocks0 next month.
There are some other interesting details. Phase I awards are $775
per new customer. That number may be adjusted in this second
round. Also, in areas served by (rural, subsidized) Rate of Return
Carriers, the subsidy number comes from the FCC's High Cost Proxy
Model. In Phase 2, these areas get subsidized according to a more
elaborate cost model now being debated.
There is also the possibility that the Phase I recipient may have to
build a certain amount of "second mile" (basically, exchange feeder
fiber) as well as "last mile" distribution. But there's no clear
obligation to make this available at wholesale, which would be nice.
They also ask about how to handle builds that have to go through
served areas in order to reach unserved ones. So even if you're on
the map, you could get overbuilt by the ILEC.
Note that a Phase I awardee must apply to serve specific unserved
areas and applies to serve a certain number of unserved subscribers,
*but* they do not actually have to use it where they said they
would. The applications are merely suggestions of where they might
find their unserved customers. They can actually spend it
elsewhere, so long as they get at least one customer added per $775.
An open question is that several awardees said that their proposed
service areas are confidential. The FCC has not decided if this is
acceptable, so it's an open question now. I'd think that a WISP
should be allowed to know if the ILEC plans to build subsidized
service to an area they're thinking of building to, so this should be
public information, not confidential. So tell the FCC!
I am hoping the FCC Committee and others interested will take note of
this. It probably won't reach the Federal Register for a while, and
then the 30 day Comment period begins.
--
Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com
ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/
+1 617 795 2701
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