Universal Service Fund

After a year of trialing gigabit-class fixed wireless access technology from Tarana Wireless, Resound Networks has decided to deploy that service to around 12,000 locations it was originally planning to cover with fiber as part of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF)-fueled expansion. Resound Networks was one of the top 10 winners in the RDOF auction, walking away with $310.7 million in government funding to cover around 219,000 unserved locations with broadband.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau—in conjunction with the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force and the Office of Economics and Analytics—authorize Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (Auction 904) support. For these 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.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau announces the E-Rate and Rural Health Care (RHC) programs’ funding caps for funding year 2022. The new caps represent a 4.2% inflation-adjusted increase in each program cap from funding year 2021. The E-Rate program funding cap for funding year 2022 is $4,456,460,992. The new cap represents a 4.2% inflation-adjusted increase in the $4,276,833,965 cap from funding year 2021.

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Inspector General alerted Lifeline, Emergency Broadband Benefit, and Affordable Connectivity Program consumers and providers to improper and abusive enrollment practices that are part of some providers’ online enrollment processes. These providers impermissibly coerce and deceive applicants for Lifeline service into enrolling in unwanted EBB/ACP service or into transferring their EBB/ACP service away from their preferred provider, contrary to the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s earlier Enforcement Advisory and FCC rules.

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it is ready to authorize more than $640 million through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to fund new broadband deployments in 26 states bringing service to nearly 250,000 locations. To date, the program has provided $4.7 billion in funding to nearly 300 carriers for new deployments in 47 states to bring broadband to almost 2.7 million locations.

Windstream has completed the first phase of deployment in Green County (KY) under the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) by bringing access to 109 locations in the city of Greensburg. An additional 409 homes will be given fiber access by the end of the year. The Green County RDOF award of $1.5 million will be supplemented by an investment of $2.3 million by Windstream. Windstream’s Kentucky RDOF commitment is to bring fiber to the home (FTTH) services to more than 15,700 addresses across the state during the next six years.

In July 2021, the Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau released its report on the state of the Lifeline marketplace. The aim of the report was to identify areas for FCC consideration regarding the continued transition of Lifeline from a program that primarily supports voice services to one with a greater focus on supporting broadband Internet access service. Unfortunately, there are three critical questions I noticed the FCC’s Lifeline report did not address:

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide consumer advocates with resources to help educate consumers about the Lifeline program and how to apply. To encourage and assist consumer outreach, USAC has created resources in this toolkit that organizations can use instead of creating outreach from scratch. Consumer advocacy groups, social service agencies, and other organizations that support low-income consumers are welcome to print and distribute any or all of the toolkit’s resources in their communities.

Recent years have seen an explosion in demand for telehealth services, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, that has increased the bandwidth needs of rural health care providers. The Federal Communications Commission is proposing changes to its Rural Health Care Program rules that are designed to ensure that rural healthcare providers receive the funding necessary to access broadband and telecommunications services to provide vital healthcare services.

The total projected collected interstate and international end-user revenue base to be used in determining the contribution factor for the Universal Service support mechanisms for 2Q2022 is $8,751,403,396.