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

<RULE> 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 266277]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Federal Communications Commission (Commission or FCC) has long recognized that rural and high-cost areas of Alaska are some of the hardest and most costly to serve in the country, with many residents lacking access to high-quality, affordable broadband that maintains parity with the technological advances that consumers living elsewhere in the nation enjoy. In this document, the Commission takes important and necessary steps to ensure continued support for the advancement of modern mobile and fixed broadband service in Alaska. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective January 30, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For further information, please contact, Rebekah Douglas, Attorney Advisor, Telecommunications Access Policy Division, Wireline Competition Bureau, at <E T="03">Rebekah.Douglas@fcc.gov</E> or 202-418-7400; Matthew Warner, Attorney Advisor, Competition and Infrastructure Policy Division, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau at <E T="03">Matthew.Warner@fcc.gov</E> or 202-418-2419; or <E T="03">ACF@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Report and Order ( <E T="03">Order</E> ) 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> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Report and Order</HD> In the <E T="03">Order,</E> the Commission takes important and necessary steps to ensure continued support for the advancement of modern mobile and fixed broadband service in Alaska. The Commission has long recognized that rural and high-cost areas of Alaska are some of the hardest and most costly to serve in the country, with many residents lacking access to high-quality, affordable broadband that maintains parity with the technological advances that consumers living elsewhere in the nation enjoy. In 2016, to address the unique needs of providing broadband service in Alaska, the Commission established the 10-year Alaska Plan to support the maintenance and deployment of voice and broadband fixed and mobile services. This Plan, along with other frozen support and model-based support, has resulted in substantially increased deployment of both fixed and mobile broadband services. As of the end of 2023, carriers in Alaska receiving high-cost support have reported deploying or upgrading fixed broadband service to more than 96,000 locations, the majority of which are served at a speed of 25/3 Mbps or greater. Since January 2017, the number of Alaskans served by 4G LTE service or better by the Alaska Plan providers increased from roughly 33,000 to 98,000 in areas eligible for support. While the original Alaska Plan and other Alaska support mechanisms have helped make significant progress in Alaska, many areas in the state remain unserved or underserved. The Commission can determine statewide, using the National Broadband Map, that about 21% of broadband-serviceable units lack at least 25/3 Mbps and about 28% of broadband-serviceable units lack at least 100/20 Mbps fixed terrestrial service. An estimated 51,000 Alaskans still receive 3G service—an outdated technological standard—or worse. Historic levels of federal investments from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA)'s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program will bring broadband to unserved and underserved locations throughout Alaska. Nonetheless, there will be an ongoing need for funding to maintain and operate the broadband networks built by the Universal Service Fund (USF) and BEAD as well as a need to support the deployment of mobile broadband which is not being funded through BEAD. Recognizing the importance of addressing current broadband funding concerns and the long-term broadband needs of Alaskan households in a rapidly changing funding environment, today the Commission moves forward with establishing the Alaska Connect Fund program (the “Alaska Connect Fund” or “ACF”) to provide ongoing and certain support to both mobile and fixed carriers receiving USF high-cost support in Alaska through 2034, with increased support amounts that reflect the transition to higher speed service goals for the ACF. With ACF, the Commission also applies lessons learned from its current Alaska support programs and ensure high-cost support complements other federal funding programs. The support needs and landscape for mobile and fixed services in Alaska are different. Therefore, as the Commission did with the original Alaska Plan, it establishes separate mechanisms for mobile and fixed providers, with each mechanism tailored to the needs of the supported services. On the fixed side, the Commission's support and broadband service goals will be materially affected by, and are intended to be complementary to, the BEAD awards, as well as other federal broadband infrastructure funding. The Commission provides a period of transitional support (ACF Transition) for existing support recipients through 2028 to allow time for network deployments funded by these programs to be completed or nearly completed. During the ACF Transition, carriers will be responsible for maintaining the same level of service and meeting any deployment obligations they are committed to under the Commission's Alaska Plan, Alaska Communications Systems (ACS), and Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) programs. Following the ACF Transition, beginning January 1, 2029, the Commission establishes the framework for the Alaska Connect Fund Fixed services program (Fixed ACF) to provide fixed service providers ongoing technology-neutral support through the end of 2034, focused on supporting the maintenance and operation of broadband and voice capable networks in Alaska. Because a full picture of fixed broadband deployment will not be clear until BEAD and other federal funding is awarded, the Commission incorporates sufficient flexibility into Fixed ACF to evaluate and address future deployment needs. This two-phased approach will allow for continued and certain support for existing USF participants for a set period, while allowing the Commission to develop a complete picture of how the BEAD program and other federal network deployment funding will be allocated in Alaska to ensure that the Fixed ACF program complements these programs most effectively for the benefit of Alaskan consumers. The Commission also adopts phased down high-cost support for any current recipient that is authorized to receive less support during Fixed ACF than during ACF Transition. While the Order provides a framework for Fixed ACF, the Commission delegates several requirements to the Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) to resolve through an opportunity for public notice and comment, including developing a process of accepting offers for support, providing guidance on how eligible carriers can participate in the program, determining eligible locations, allocating support for eligible locations, and determining whether support for new deployment is necessary, including whether a budget adjustment is in the public interest. The Commission delegates to WCB authority to determine whether any adjustments to the public interest obligations, including any updates to the methodology for the Alaska-specific benchmark, are in the public interest. The Commission also delegates authority to WCB to determine whether additional accountability and oversight measures, including certifications, reporting requirements or compliance measures are necessary for Fixed ACF and any phase-down support recipients. On the mobile side, because BEAD does not explicitly fund mobile deployments, the Alaska Connect Fund has an important role to play in ensuring Alaskans have access to reliable, advanced mobile service, particularly in upgrading networks to 5G and encouraging deployment to unserved and underserved areas. As with fixed service, the Commission adopts a two-phase approach for mobile service that balances the importance of giving mobile providers certainty of funding in certain areas to help meet its goals of 5G deployment, with the need to ensure funding is not being targeted to last generation technologies ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> 2G and 3G) but rather is targeted to areas where it is needed the most and to address concerns of duplicate support. The framework the Commission adopts for mobile support relies on the improved mobile coverage data obtained in the Broadband Data Collection (BDC), which is reflected on the Commission's National Broadband Map and which provides it with the most comprehensive picture to date about where mobile broadband service is and is not available across the country, including Alaska. Overall, the Commission extends support for a set period for mobile providers that: (1) participated in the Alaska Plan and (2) choose to opt into the Alaska Connect Fund, subject to conditions set forth in this document. The terms and goal speeds for mobile support under the Alaska Connect Fund will be based on whether a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 293k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━