Establishing a 5G Fund for Rural America

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 54</CFR> <DEPDOC>[GN Docket No. 20-32; FCC 24-89; FR ID 243903]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Establishing a 5G Fund for Rural America</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission or FCC) seeks comment on whether to require a winning bidder in the 5G Fund Phase I auction to demonstrate during the long-form application process that it has obtained the consent of the relevant Tribal government(s) for any necessary access to deploy network facilities using its 5G Fund support on Tribal lands within the area(s) of its winning bid(s). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments are due on or before October 17, 2024; reply comments are due on or before November 1, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Pursuant to §§ 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 1.415, 1.419, interested parties may file comments and reply comments on or before the dates indicated on the first page of this document. You may submit comments, identified by GN Docket No. 20-32, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Filers:</E> Comments may be filed electronically using the internet by accessing the ECFS: <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/</E> . • <E T="03">Paper Filers:</E> Parties who choose to file by paper must file an original and one copy of each filing. • Filings can be sent by hand or messenger delivery, by commercial courier, or by the U.S. Postal Service Express Mail. All filings must be addressed to the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission. • Hand-delivered or messenger-delivered paper filings for the Commission's Secretary are accepted between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. by the FCC's mailing contractor at 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. All hand deliveries must be held together with rubber bands or fasteners. Any envelopes and boxes must be disposed of before entering the building. • Commercial courier deliveries (any deliveries not by the U.S. Postal Service) must be sent to 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. Filings sent by U.S. Postal Service First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express must be sent to 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. • <E T="03">People With Disabilities:</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (braille, large print, electronic files, audio format) send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at (202) 418-0530. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kelly Quinn of the Office of Economics and Analytics, Auction Division, at (202) 418-0660 or <E T="03">Kelly.Quinn@fcc.gov,</E> or Valerie Barrish of the Office of Economics and Analytics, Auction Division, at (202) 418-0354 or <E T="03">Valerie.Barrish@fcc.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's <E T="03">Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</E> ( <E T="03">Second FNPRM</E> ) in GN Docket No. 20-32, FCC 24-89, adopted on August 14, 2024 and released on August 29, 2024. The full text of this document is available for public inspection at the following internet address: <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-89A1.pdf</E> . <E T="03">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act.</E> Consistent with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, a summary of this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking will be available on <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> 1. In the <E T="03">Second FNPRM,</E> the Commission seeks comment on whether to require a winning bidder in the 5G Fund Phase I auction to demonstrate during the long-form application process, and prior to being authorized to receive support, that it has obtained the consent of the relevant Tribal government(s) for any necessary access to deploy network facilities using its 5G Fund support on Tribal lands within the area(s) of its winning bid(s). For purposes of a requirement such as this, the Commission would follow the long-standing precedent articulated in its <E T="03">Statement of Policy on Establishing a Government-to-Government Relationship with Indian Tribes</E> ( <E T="03">Policy Statement</E> ), 16 FCC Rcd 4078 (2020), of using the term “Tribal Government” to mean “the recognized government of an Indian Tribe that has been determined eligible to receive services from the Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs.” The term “Indian Tribe,” in turn, is defined in the <E T="03">Policy Statement</E> to mean “any Indian or Alaska Native tribe, band, nation, pueblo, village or community which is acknowledged by the federal government to constitute a government-to-government relationship with the United States and eligible for the programs and services established by the United States for Indians.” The Commission recognizes that the definition of “Tribal lands” adopted by the Commission for the 5G Fund in the <E T="03">5G Fund Report and Order,</E> 85 FR 75770 (Nov. 25, 2020), may not fully align with a Tribal Government's jurisdiction for purposes of providing Tribal consent for all of the areas within a particular winning bid. In that circumstance, a winning bidder would nonetheless need to obtain Tribal consent for any area(s) within the area of a winning bid for which the relevant Tribal Government has jurisdiction to grant such consent before we would award support for that particular winning bid. 2. In its reply comments concerning the <E T="03">5G Fund Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,</E> 88 FR 66781 (Sept. 28, 2024), National Tribal Telecommunications Association (NTTA) supports the adoption of a Tribal consent requirement during the long-form process and before the Commission authorizes any 5G Fund support to serve Tribal lands. 3. The Commission seeks comment on whether including a Tribal consent requirement would advance the goals of the 5G Fund and would be administratively efficient for all parties and the Commission. The Commission tentatively concludes that adopting a Tribal consent requirement in its 5G Fund rules is consistent with its long-standing recognition that engagement between Tribal governments and communications providers, particularly early engagement, is an important element to promote the successful deployment and provision of service on Tribal lands. 4. In seeking comment on this issue, the Commission asks commenters to provide input on how it can best assess an applicant's eligibility to be authorized to receive 5G Fund support for the purpose of deploying network facilities that would enable 5G mobile broadband service located on Tribal lands, while incorporating Tribal government consent into the Commission's approval process. The Commission notes that, under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, “an Eligible Entity may not treat as `unserved' or `underserved' any location that is already subject to an enforceable federal, state, or local commitment to deploy qualifying broadband” and a commitment to deploy broadband will not be considered an enforceable commitment “unless it includes a legally binding agreement, which includes a Tribal Government Resolution, between the Tribal Government of the Tribal Lands encompassing that location, or its authorized agent, and a service provider offering qualifying broadband service to that location.” Does including a requirement for a winning bidder to demonstrate that it has obtained Tribal consent during the 5G Fund Phase I long-form application process ensure that evidence of Tribal government consent will be included in the Commission's process of authorizing the winning bidder to receive support? Does such a requirement also provide such evidence during a 5G Fund support recipient's deployment of network facilities to provide 5G mobile broadband service that are located on Tribal lands? 5. The Commission envisions that any Tribal consent requirement it may adopt for the 5G Fund will be a continuation of the Commission's commitment to ensuring Tribal engagement by service providers that receive high-cost universal service support and in furtherance of the Commission's Policy Statement establishing a government-to-government relationship with Tribes. In the <E T="03">Policy Statement,</E> the Commission stated that it “recognizes the unique legal relationship that exists between the federal government and Indian Tribal governments, as reflected in the Constitution of the United States, treaties, federal statutes, Executive orders, and numerous court decisions.” Most recently, in the <E T="03">Enhanced Alternative-Connect America Cost Model Report and Order</E> ( <E T="03">Enhanced A-CAM Report and Order</E> ), 88 FR 55918 (Aug. 17, 2023), the Commission recognized “the deep digital divide that persists between Tribal lands and the rest of the country and emphasized that engagement between Tribal governments and communications providers, either currently providing service or contemplating the provision of service on Tribal lands, is vitally important to the successful deployment and provision of service.” 6. As the Commission explained in the <E T="03">Enhanced A-CAM Report and Order,</E> the rules governing the disbursement of high-cost universal service support already include an annual requirement for high-cost recipients whose support areas include Tribal lands to undertake Tribal engagement. Pursuant to § 54.313(a)(5) of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 54.313(a)(5), a recipient of high-cost support that serves Tribal lands must demo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 32k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━