Chairman Pai Says He Will Widen Mobility Map Challenge Window

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai says he is currently setting the regulatory wheels in motion to secure a 90-day extension of the challenge window for the map the FCC will use to allocate over $4.5 billion in mobile broadband subsidies. In a May 30 letter to Sen Roger Wicker (R-MS), Chairman Pai signaled that was part of his commitment to ensure the map would be high quality, a map whose accuracy will be improved by the challenge process. The FCC put out the map of areas eligible for Mobility Fund Phase II money over the next decade as part of its move to redirect wireless carrier subsidies where private capital was already at work to, as Chairman Ajit Pai put it, "something far more useful: bringing 4G LTE service to rural Americans who don’t have it today." Sen Wicker had led a bipartisan group of Sens who asked May 29 for the extension, saying the map as the FCC issued it featured areas in their home states that showed service while the facts on the ground suggested otherwise.