Connect America Fund, Alaska Connect Fund, Connect America Fund-Alaska Plan, ETC Annual Reports and Certifications, Telecommunications Carriers Eligible To Receive Universal Service Support, Universal Service Reform-Mobility Fund

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 54</CFR> <DEPDOC>[WC Docket Nos. 10-90, 23-328, 16-271, 14-58, 09-197; WT Docket No. 10-208; FCC 24-116; FR ID 264716]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Connect America Fund, Alaska Connect Fund, Connect America Fund—Alaska Plan, ETC Annual Reports and Certifications, Telecommunications Carriers Eligible To Receive Universal Service Support, Universal Service Reform—Mobility Fund</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 (FCC or Commission) adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) that seeks comment on the implementation of the Alaska Connect Fund (ACF) for mobile service from the period January 1, 2030 through December 31, 2034 for areas where more than one mobile provider had been receiving support for overlapping service areas, or duplicate-support areas (ACF Mobile Phase II). This includes comment on the methodology to determine support amounts in duplicate-support areas and the competitive or alternative mechanism to distribute support, which would result in support to a single mobile provider in duplicate-support areas after ACF Mobile Phase I (mobile support provided from January 1, 2027 to December 31, 2029) ends. The Commission also seeks comment on how to distribute support in unserved areas, Tribal consent requirements for the ACF, and other additional issues that would impact the ACF. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments are due on or before February 3, 2025, and reply comments are due on or before March 4, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by WC Docket Nos. 10-90, 23-328, 16-271, 14-58, 09-197 or WT Docket No. 10-208 by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Filers:</E> Comments may be filed electronically using the internet by accessing the Electronic Comment Filing System (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. 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 (voice), 202-418-0432 (tty). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For further information, please contact, Matt Warner, Competition and Infrastructure Policy Division, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, at <E T="03">Matthew.Warner@fcc.gov</E> or (202) 418-2419. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's FNPRM in WC Docket Nos. 10-90, 23-328, 16-271, 14-58, 09-197 and WT Docket No. 10-208; FCC 24-116, adopted on November 1, 2024 and released on November 4, 2024. The full text of this document is available at the following internet address: <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-alaska-connect-fund-further-address-broadband-needs.</E> The Commission also concurrently adopted a Report and Order (Order) that takes important and necessary steps to ensure continued support for the advancement of modern mobile and fixed broadband service in Alaska. <E T="03">Filing Requirements.</E> 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 in this document. Comments may be filed using the Commission's ECFS or by paper. All filings must be addressed to the Commission's Secretary, Office of the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission. <E T="03">Ex Parte Rules.</E> This proceeding shall be treated as a “permit-but-disclose” proceeding in accordance with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. Persons making <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations must file a copy of any written presentation or a memorandum summarizing any oral presentation within two business days after the presentation (unless a different deadline applicable to the Sunshine period applies). Persons making oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations are reminded that memoranda summarizing the presentation must: (1) list all persons attending or otherwise participating in the meeting at which the <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentation was made, and (2) summarize all data presented and arguments made during the presentation. If the presentation consisted in whole or in part of the presentation of data or arguments already reflected in the presenter's written comments, memoranda, or other filings in the proceeding, the presenter may provide citations to such data or arguments in his or her prior comments, memoranda, or other filings (specifying the relevant page and/or paragraph numbers where such data or arguments can be found) in lieu of summarizing them in the memorandum. Documents shown or given to Commission staff during <E T="03">ex parte</E> meetings are deemed to be written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and must be filed consistent with Rule 1.1206(b), 47 CFR 1.1206(b). Participants in this proceeding should familiarize themselves with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. <E T="03">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act.</E> Consistent with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, a summary of the FNPRM is available on <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</HD> In this FNPRM, the Commission seeks comment on a number of issues related to the implementation of the ACF. As an initial matter, for ACF Mobile Phase II, the Commission seeks comment on a methodology to determine a support amount for areas where more than one mobile provider had been receiving support for overlapping service areas. This mechanism may also be used to determine support amounts to claw back for areas that the Commission deems ineligible for mobile support in the concurrently adopted Report and Order (Order) in the event that support is not shifted to a comparable area. Additionally, the Commission seeks comment on ACF Mobile Phase II service requirements, as well as how to eliminate duplicative support in ACF Mobile Phase II so that only one provider would continue to receive funding in duplicate-support areas. First, the Commission seeks comment on a competitive mechanism for awarding support to one provider in duplicate-support areas. Second, the Commission seeks comment on an alternative mechanism to address duplicate-support areas that would designate one provider that would continue receiving support in the same area, and would allow other providers to choose different areas to serve to continue receiving the previous support levels. In addition, the Commission seeks to update the record on how best to deploy mobile service to areas that remain unserved with the $162 million from the Alaska Plan that has been reallocated toward this purpose. Further, the Commission seeks comment on conducting a reverse auction to award support to competitive Eligible Telecommunication Carriers (ETCs) to deploy advanced communications networks in these areas. The Commission seeks comment on additional issues for implementation of the mobile portion of the ACF, for both the two support-area plan established in the concurrently adopted Order and the ACF Mobile Phase II as described in this document. The Commission seeks comment on retail consumer conditions, including seeking comment on a proposal to impose a minimum subscriber requirement for ACF mobile participants, as well as seeking comment on marketing on Tribal lands. The Commission also seeks further comment on offering incentives to deploy networks with Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN). Finally, the Commission seeks further comment on Tribal consent under both the mobile and fixed portions of the ACF. The Commission seeks comment on how to determine support amounts by area for purposes of the mobile portion of the ACF—for example, to determine the support amounts for duplicate-support areas and single-support areas, as well as previously supported areas that are no longer eligible. In the Alaska Plan, providers were awarded funding based on statewide commitments. Because the Commission adopts an area-based approach for the mobile portion of the ACF, it must establish a way to disaggregate total support across smaller geographic areas. Specifically, in order to address issues involving providers serving areas that are ineligible in the ACF but were eligible in the Alaska Plan ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> areas which have an unsubsidized provider of 5G-NR at 7/1 Mbps in an outdoor stationary environment or three or more mobile providers offering at le ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 82k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━