Universal Service Fund

The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) projects that, $379.97 million in unused funds is available for use in future Rural Health Care (RHC) Program funding years beginning in 2021. The Federal Communications Commission directs USAC to carry these unused funds over to satisfy funding year 2021 RHC Program demand. The overall RHC Program funding cap for 2021 is $612,016,418.

A second set of projects selected for the Connected Care Pilot Program were announced by the Federal Communications Commission on June 17.

Smith Bagley, commercial mobile wireless operator, has asked the Federal Communications Commission for a six-month extension of the Lifeline rule waivers (currently scheduled to expire June 30, 2021) through December 31, 2021. Smith Bagley provides Lifeline service in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah to over 60,000 people, more than 50,000 of whom live in low-income households on the Navajo, Hopi, White Mountain Apache, Zuni, and Ramah Navajo Tribal lands. Smith Bagley argues that: 1) The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Will Continue for Many More Months and 2) COVID-19 Has Continued to Severe

As more Americans cut the cord on traditional landline phones, a government program that subsidizes internet service to poor communities is in danger of collapsing because it relies on taxes from dwindling long-distance calling fees. That’s prompting calls to shore up the more than 20-year-old Universal Service Fund by tapping technology companies that profit from the growing use of broadband. The fund, which distributed $8.3 billion last year, helps connect schools, libraries and rural health care facilities. It also provides a connection subsidy for roughly 7 million poor households.

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Managing Director announced that the proposed universal service contribution factor for the third quarter of 2021 will be 0.318 or 31.8 percent.

The National Lifeline Association urged the Federal Communications Commission to expeditiously release a Public Notice seeking comment on the association's Petition for Rulemaking so that others can comment on it and the FCC can build a record to take the necessary actions to transition the Lifeline program into a program that is post-Emergency Broadband Benefit Program ready. The FCC should not work in a linear fashion, but rather consider important improvements to the Lifeline program now so that those improvements can be in place when the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program funding runs

Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Midco is a regional service provider that serves about 400,000 customers in five states. The company is a joint venture of Comcast and Midcontinent Media and provides cable, internet (including gigabit speeds), and telephone services in the Dakotas, Minnesota and parts of Kansas and Wisconsin.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau authorized $84,456,870 in Connect USVI Fund Stage 2 support for the winning proposals from Broadband VI to provide voice and broadband services for the 10-year period with speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second.

Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI) led a group of 20 senators in calling on the leaders of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to share data to identify communities without high-speed internet access and work together to improve broadband connectivity. In a letter to the agency leaders, the senators also called on them to collaborate and find ways to ensure families in need also have information on accessing Lifeline, an existing federal phone and internet service program. “We urge HUD and USDA t

In Spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to hybrid and remote learning for most schools turned what was once a “homework gap” into a “learning opportunity gap” as devices and internet access became necessary in order to keep students connected and learning. The purpose of this brief is to present strategies for deploying off-campus wireless networks as a sustainable solution to provide home connectivity to all students and educators. This brief shows how school districts have taken diverse approaches to build off-campus wireless networks.