The FCC has received hundreds of complaints about carriers’ coronavirus pledge

In a statement to the House Commerce Committee, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said the agency has received around 2,200 complaints related to theCOVID-19 pandemic. Of those complaints, 1,400 have received a response from the carrier, Chairman Pai said. Around 500 of those total complaints were filed specifically about the FCC’s Keep Americans Connected Pledge, the agency’s primary response to the pandemic. “The other COVID-19 complaints involve questions about billing or network issues or broadband access generally,” Chairman Pai said. “It’s my understanding that most of the complaints that we have received about the pledge have been resolved to ensure that the consumer remains connected,” Chairman Pai said. Democrats focused slightly more on the deficits the pandemic had exposed, while Republicans focused more on what the FCC was doing to help out given the current state of broadband, however it was characterized. But both sides praised FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Keep Americans Connected pledge and the 750-plus ISPs who had signed on to it, then re-upped for the extended version. 

• Chairman Pai told Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) that the FCC did not have the authority to use E-rate schools and libraries broadband subsidy money to fund home broadband for students or devices like tablets and computers, but that the FCC had pushed for that authority from Congress in a distance learning initiative similar to the FCC COVID-19 telehealth program Congress authorized in the CARES Act.
• While the FCC has approved $33 million in telehealth funding, it has only received one certified invoice--so virtually none of the $200 million authorized in the program has made it out the door yet. 
• Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) asked about the accuracy of a number of challenges by carriers to the FCC's preliminary list of census blocks where there is no broadband and thus eligible for some of the $16 billion in the FCC's reverse auction of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) money for rural broadband buildouts. Chairman Pai Pai responded that FCC staffers were carefully reviewing those challenges for areas that should be included of excluded from the preliminary list.