Telecommunication

The US is still struggling to complete the break up with Chinese telecom companies that Donald Trump started four years ago. The problem: Small communications networks, largely in rural areas, are saddled with old Chinese equipment they can’t afford to remove and which they can’t repair if it breaks. The companies say they want to ditch the Chinese tech, but promised funds from Congress aren’t coming quickly enough and aren’t enough to cover the cost.

In March 2022, the Federal Communications Commission issued a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 22-20) that asks if the rules should change for allocating the costs of a pole replacement that occurs when a new carrier asks to add a new wire or device onto an existing pole. The timing of this docket is in anticipation of a huge amount of rural fiber construction that will be coming as a result of the tsunami of state and federal broadband grants. The current rules push the full cost of replacing a pole onto the entity that is asking to get onto the pole.

The Federal Communications Commission proposed rules that would modify the intercarrier compensation regime to address ongoing harmful arbitrage practices that raise costs for long-distance carriers and their customers. The FCC seeks comment on proposed changes to its Access Stimulation Rules to ensure that they apply to traffic that terminates through providers of IP-enabled services (IPES Providers).

On July 13, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee passed five health and telecommunications bills. This includes:

A recent telecommunications outage left millions of Canadians without access to internet and cell services for hours. It was a stunning reminder that Canada must revolutionize the industry and dismantle the oligopoly that runs it. On July 8, more than 10 million customers of Rogers Communications were left without internet and cell services when a maintenance update went sideways. At least two days later, some customers were still without service, while others had unreliable access. It was the second time in 15 months the Rogers service failed.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau maintains the status quo and extends, for an additional year, the waiver pausing both the phase-out of Lifeline support for voice-only services and the increase in Lifeline minimum service standards for mobile broadband data capacity.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau announced—effective on August 31, 2022—the counties in which conditional forbearance from the obligation to offer Lifeline-supported voice service applies, pursuant to the FCC’s 2016 Lifeline Order. This forbearance applies only to the Lifeline voice obligation of eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) that are designated for purposes of receiving both high-cost and Lifeline support (high-cost/Lifeline ETCs), and not to Lifeline-only ETCs. The FCC granted forbearance from high-cost/Lifeline ETCs’ obligation to offer an

The Federal Communications Commission modified the cost recovery rules for funding two forms of Internet-based telecommunications relay services (TRS)—video relay service (VRS) and Internet Protocol Relay Service (IP Relay). The FCC expanded the Interstate TRS Fund contribution base for support of those services to include intrastate as well as interstate end-user revenues of TRS Fund contributors, ensuring fair treatment of intrastate and interstate communications services and users in the funding of relay services.

Experts from three key industry and worker groups dished on what they view as the key hits and misses in the US government’s broadband policy after the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued rules that will guide the distribution of $45 billion in funding for network rollouts. Among other things, they spotlighted a focus on fiber, secure networks, state planning grants and workforce provisions.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau, in conjunction with the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force and the Office of Economics and Analytics, authorizes Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (Auction 904) support for another 830 winning bids. For each of the winning bids, the FCC has reviewed the long-form application information, including the letter(s) of credit and Bankruptcy Code opinion letter(s) from the long-form applicant’s legal counsel.