FCC Mobility Fund Proposal Raises Important Questions

The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote in Nov on a proposal for a Universal Service/ Connect America mobility fund that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler shared with other commission officials recently. A fact sheet about the FCC mobility fund proposal released to the public raises some important questions about the fund and how it would be implemented. Also last week, Chairman Wheeler circulated a proposal regarding data and VoLTE roaming within the commission – another proposal scheduled for a vote next month by the full commission.

One question I would ask about that is whether there are any currently subsidized areas that are high-cost for the landline provider but not for the wireless carrier. If so, it would appear that a wireless carrier who doesn’t really need funding might still get it if all of the 4G LTE carriers serving an area were previously collecting high-cost funding. That carrier would have to underbid the other carriers to continue to collect funding, but might not actually need funding at all. It also isn’t clear whether the proposed budget is sufficient to achieve what the FCC wants to accomplish, as the budget seems to have been calculated based on historical support for wireless carriers, rather than on an examination of the funding needed to achieve program goals.