FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly Issues E-Rate Warnings

Commissioner Michael O'Rielly of the Federal Communications Commission delivered a cautionary message to districts, libraries, and companies in his opening remarks for a workshop about building fiber with E-rate funds for school and library connectivity. At the FCC-sponsored event in Washington, Commissioner O'Rielly said that the FCC "will not hesitate to do everything within the law to recoup any excesses or abuses of the program, and prosecute those that push the program boundaries -- no matter how well-intentioned they may be." Then, for anyone seeking funding for fiber build-outs to get connectivity in unserved areas, he recommended that they be "extremely cautious."

"Before you declare an area to be unserved, please double check with nearby providers or with the FCC to find out whether it's truly unserved," he said. "It would be a terrible misuse of scarce [E-rate funding] dollars...to overbuild." Notably, Commissioner O'Rielly is one of two Republican commissioners who in 2014 voted against modernizing the E-rate program, and increasing the cap on its funding for schools and libraries by $1.5 billion annually to $3.9 billion. The FCC's three Democratic members voted in favor of both proposals, and they passed.