The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of 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 Regulatory Bulletin.
TELECOM
FCC
Connect America Fund Phase I Round Two
The FCC announced that recipients of Connect America Fund Phase I Round Two support must file location information by February 24, 2015. This includes latitude and longitude for each location to be counted toward satisfying their deployment obligations. FCC rules require that the information be submitted within one year after a carrier files its notice of acceptance. Since carriers filed their notices on different dates, for administrative efficiency, the FCC decided to impose a consolidated deadline. (February 24 was used because it is one year after the last acceptance was filed.) Recipients of Phase I Round Two support must complete deployment of broadband-capable infrastructure to two-thirds of the required number of locations within two years of providing notice of acceptance of funding and must complete deployment to all required locations within three years. The relevant date for purposes of determining this deadline is the date on which the amount of Round Two funding to be authorized for each carrier was finalized.
Connect America Fund Phase II
The FCC announced that its Wireline Competition Bureau completed its review of the Connect America Phase II challenges and determined which of those challenges present sufficient evidence to make a prima facie case that the status of the census block should be changed. The Bureau released two lists of census blocks. The first, available here, is a list of census blocks for which a party has made a prima facie challenge that the block should not be eligible for Phase II support. The second, available here, is a list of blocks for which a party has made a prima facie challenge that the block should be eligible for Phase II support. Parties have until November 10, 2014, to file an FCC Form 505 to respond to the inclusion of particular census blocks on either list.
Rural Broadband Experiments
The FCC announced: (1) the release of FCC Form 5610, the application form for the rural broadband experiments; and (2) that the application filing date will be delayed past Oct. 14, 2014, so the FCC can complete testing of the electronic submission system. The FCC said it would announce the new filing date in a future Public Notice. The FCC’s release includes screenshots of the electronic Form 5610; the bid form and descriptive data form that applicants must complete and attach as part of the application process; a sample project information submission; a guide to working with the rural broadband experiments census block list; and a guide to completing the bid form. These materials are available at http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/rural-broadband-experiments. Because of the delayed filing window, the FCC also postponed the webinar designed to assist parties interested in bidding for Connect America Fund money for rural broadband experiments. The webinar was originally scheduled for September 29th but will now take place on Thursday, October 9 at 2 p.m. EST. Parties interested in attending this webinar should email RBEwebinar@fcc.gov to register. See the Regulatory Mix dated 9/22/14
