All in Broadband
Rate-of-return local exchange carriers have until June 17, 2019 to decide whether to move to Alternative Connect America Cost Model support or continue receiving cost-based legacy support. One important factor in this decision will be the broadband deployment obligations required under the cost model.
Many rate-of-return local exchange carriers having a very important decision to make in the next 45 days: move to Alternative Connect America Cost Model support or continue to receive cost-based universal service fund support. They have until June 17, 2019 to decide.
News update for April 2019.
FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has renewed his call for the FCC to incorporate means-testing into the universal service fund’s high cost program.
A summary of news from March 2019.
Kansas rural communications service provider Epic Touch Co., Inc. has entered into an agreement to purchase CP-TEL Holdings, Inc., the sole direct owner of Louisiana communications service providers Campti-Pleasant Hill Telephone Co., Inc. and CP-TEL Network Services, Inc.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has ruled that Texas-based Internet service provider Grande Communications Networks, LLC may not use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor as part of its defense against a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a group of record labels. The case is now set to move to trial, where the record companies are seeking to hold Grande secondarily liable for over one million instances of direct copyright infringement by Grande broadband subscribers.
FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has asked the Universal Service Administrative Company to provide information on the use of E-Rate funding to overbuild existing USF-supported fiber networks. Commissioner O’Rielly has asked USAC to respond to his request no later than April 1, 2019.
This article is a summary of news from February 2019.
The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau has announced revised offers of Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) support and associated revised deployment obligations for the 262 carriers that have already been authorized to receive A-CAM. These carriers have until March 27, 2019, to notify the FCC whether they accept the revised amount of model-based support.
