CenturyLink, Frontier missed FCC broadband deadlines in dozens of states

CenturyLink and Frontier Communications have again failed to meet broadband-deployment deadlines in dozens of states after taking money from the Federal Communications Commission. The deadline to hit 100 percent of the required deployments passed on December 31, 2020. Both CenturyLink and Frontier informed the FCC that they missed the deadline to finish deployment in numerous states. The carriers won't face the possibility of punishment yet. As Frontier said in its FCC filing on Friday last week, US law gives the ISP "until December 31, 2021 to complete its CAF II buildout in the states where it has not yet achieved the 100 percent milestone." The law cited by Frontier says that once an ISP informs the FCC that it "has not met a final milestone," the carrier "will have twelve months from the date of the final milestone deadline to come into full compliance." After that, the government can take back an amount "equal to 1.89 times the average amount of support per location received in the support area," plus 10 percent of the carrier's total funding in that area. CenturyLink and Frontier also fell short of interim deadlines that passed at the end of 2019.