[1st-mile-nm] FCC Connect America Fund

[Richard Lowenberg]

Here's an article from Governing Magazine, with some added links to FCC 
sites,
on the FCC's new, highly controvercial Connect America Fund.    This 
could have
direct impacts in New Mexico and all other states, as well as on public 
and private sector providers.
RL
------------------------

Connecting Rural America

The FCC's Connect America Fund aims to bring broadband access to rural 
areas, but is it more damaging to broadband rollout than helpful?

by: Jessica Mulholland | June 20, 2012
http://www.governing.com/topics/technology/col-connecting-rural-america.html

Though it’s tough to believe, not all homes in the U.S. had telephone 
service until the mid-1990s. It was in 1997 that the Universal Service 
Fund (USF) was created to support landline expansion because, at the 
time, access to this service was considered imperative for involvement 
in society.

Fifteen years later, the U.S. is in the same situation, but the service 
is broadband.

For years, extending broadband connectivity to rural areas has been an 
issue — relatively low population density, topography, greater 
geographical distances and cost have all been barriers to 
implementation.

But broadband connectivity is no longer considered a luxury — it’s 
necessary for full participation in our economy and society, said FCC 
Chairman Julius Genachowski last October, when the FCC unanimously voted 
to reform and modernize the USF.

This reform is aimed at helping connect every American to high-speed 
Internet by the end of the decade, just as the fund did for telephone 
service in the 20th century, according to the FCC. The next step in the 
process came on April 25, when the FCC officially launched the new 
Connect America Fund (CAF) 
http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/connecting-america , a reform that will 
be dole out $300 million to both large and small telephone companies 
that agree by July 24 to “strict accountability measures and buildout 
requirements," wrote Sharon Gillett, chief of the FCC’s Wireline 
Competition Bureau on the official FCC blog.
http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-launches-connect-america-fund?page=1

Using CAF funds along with their own private funds, it is hoped that 
the telecoms will help deliver broadband to more than 18 million rural 
Americans with broadband by 2020, according to the FCC. But some 
governments aren’t so sure it’s this simple. “The Connect America Fund 
is part of a larger FCC order,” says Chris Nelson, commissioner of the 
South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. “And as it stands today, it 
looks like the whole of that order may well be more damaging to 
broadband rollout in rural South Dakota than helpful to it.”

And that’s the general sentiment nationwide.

In this first phase, telephone companies with networks on the ground — 
and that are subject to state carrier of last resort requirements, which 
means the carrier commits or is required by law to provide service to 
any customer in a service area that requests it -- will get “right of 
first refusal” for CAF funding, according to an FCC spokesman. This 
means these incumbent telephone providers get first dibs on the funding. 
It’s not as simple, however, as these telephone companies choosing which 
areas of what states they want to build out their broadband services, 
according to the FCC. “They will be required to make statewide 
commitments and not ‘cherry pick’ the easiest-to-serve territories,” 
says FCC Spokesman Mark Wigfield.

What it does mean, however, is that smaller companies that don’t 
receive USF funding but have independently worked to bridge the divide 
aren’t eligible for CAF funding to build further, says Benjamin Lennett, 
policy director at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology 
Institute.

The locations that already have service from non-subsidized companies 
aren’t eligible for CAF funding either, which is a good thing, says 
Steve Morris, vice president and associate general counsel for the 
National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA). “One of the 
things we’ve been pretty vocal about in the FCC’s reform effort is it 
doesn’t make sense to have government subsidies going to places where 
the private sector has already built broadband networks,” he says.

But the fact that phase-one monies are dedicated solely to large, 
incumbent telephone companies isn’t necessarily the right approach, say 
both Morris and Lennett. “From our perspective, continuing to give 
billions of dollars particularly to large telephone companies that have 
sort of neglected to provide broadband service in rural areas … over 
their existing telephone infrastructure is really a waste of consumers’ 
money,” Lennett says. “There are much better approaches than relying on 
these large companies to serve these rural communities.”

In South Dakota, there are classic examples of the rural-rural divide — 
where on one side of a rural gravel road, there’s fiber optic to the 
home, and literally on the other side of that gravel road, there is no 
broadband whatsoever — “and no possibility to get it,” Nelson says, 
“because it’s in a different service area.”

In Maine, former Gov. Angus King, says there’s a problem that “better 
use” of the Connect America Fund could fix. Despite having just 
completed a super high-speed fiber-optic corridor that links all areas 
of the state, tens of thousands of citizens and businesses are still 
part of the "last mile" problem — the lack of a link between the new 
main line and their homes and businesses, wrote King, an independent 
candidate for the U.S. Senate, in the state’s Portland Press Herald. 
“It’s like an interstate that goes all around the state,” he says, “but 
it’s like an interstate without feeder roads.”

But the problem is actually bigger than that, says Stephanie Dunn, a 
technology consultant on King’s campaign. “It’s not even necessarily a 
rural issue; we’ve gotten comments from people in Augusta saying, ‘I 
don’t have high-speed Internet here.’” People in certain parts of Maine, 
Dunn says, still solely use libraries and Internet cafes for high-speed 
connectivity.

How could CAF be better used? King says by looking toward more 
fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) /fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) versus focusing 
on DSL. “I’m afraid DSL just isn’t going to be the answer in the long 
run,” he says, because in FTTH, once the wire is out to the houses, 
there’s unlimited capacity. “It’s more expensive in the short run, but 
in the long run, it’s more capacity and more reliable, and that’s really 
where we need to be focusing,” King says. “I think we need to be careful 
in the expenditure of these funds that we’re not buying old technology.”

And the FCC is seeking feedback as far as the technology that should be 
used. "The question includes the important threshold matters of whether 
the model should presume green-field or brown-field deployment and 
whether the model should estimate costs of FTTP or DSL (including 
fiber-to-the-node) technology," the commission wrote in a public notice.

This Thursday, King’s campaign is holding a live, streaming Tech Town 
Hall, during which he’ll discuss the Connect America Fund as it pertains 
not only to Maine residents, but rural residents nationwide.

About 1,500 miles to the west in Minnesota, small phone companies that 
have aggressively built out fiber-optic networks and expanded their 
high-speed Internet access worry that the shift from USF to CAF may 
force them to slow these expansions, according to Minnesota Public 
Radio. And other small towns — like Bristol, Va.; Kutztown, Pa.; and 
Powell, Wyo. — all have community fiber networks that are ineligible for 
CAF support.

Another problem with CAF’s requirements is the definition of 
“high-speed.” For telcos to get funding, they must provide a certain 
level of broadband performance — in addition to providing voice service, 
Lennett says, they must provide broadband speeds of 4 
megabits-per-second (mbps) download speed and 1 mbps upload speed. 
“Whether that’s necessarily sufficient going forward for many rural 
communities is really an open question,” he says, adding that the 
standard in most urban areas is 15 to 20 mbps on cable networks. “You 
know the amount of bandwidth and capacity that applications keep chewing 
up is increasing, and we’re talking about 4 down and 1 up in rural areas 
as our floor? I’m not sure that’s comparable service.”

One of the keys with USF was not only offering service at reasonably 
comparable prices, he says, but also offering comparable levels of 
service. “With this setup, we’re going to create really disparate levels 
of service in many rural areas compared to what you’d see in an urban 
area,” Lennett says.

After the July 24 deadline — in areas where incumbents decline to make 
this commitment — local exchange carriers, including cable, wireless and 
satellite companies, will have opportunities to compete for CAF funding, 
the FCC says, as part of a “reverse auction.”

In South Dakota, Nelson says these may not bridge the divide either. 
“We’re getting some indications that the companies simply may not be 
interested in doing that,” he says. “Our hope, and really I think the 
whole goal of the Connect America Fund, was to provide these financial 
incentives to allow companies to bid into serving these unserved areas. 
But at this point, at least one company flat out told us, ‘We’re not 
going to do it,’ which bothers us. I hope that’s not a trend.”


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Richard Lowenberg
1st-Mile Institute
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
505-989-9110 / 505-603-5200
www.1st-mile.com   rl at 1st-mile.com
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