USF Tracker - June 2021 | Kelley Drye & Warren LLP jdsupra.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jdsupra.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
May 26, 2021
S. Derek Turner The Trump FCC awarded Charter millions to build fiber in towns that by then were either fully wired with municipal fiber or nearly at that point. Flickr user Tony Webster
Note: This is part six in an ongoing series. Be sure to check out the previous posts:
Part 1: Fiber to the Clubhouse: Pai Subsidizes Broadband for the Rich
Part 2: Broadband Boondoggle: Ajit Pai’s $886M Gift to Elon Musk
Part 3: Space-X Broadband: Coming to an Empty Traffic Island Near You
Part 4: Ajit Pai’s Broadband Legacy: Haste and Waste
Part 5: Plan Fail: How Pai Imperiled a Rural Town’s Fiber Network
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States Want To Maintain Oversight In FCC s Lifeline Program
Law360 (April 21, 2021, 10:15 PM EDT) Congress should not discard a key eligibility requirement for telecom carriers to qualify for the FCC s Lifeline program because that would weaken the low-income subsidy program and lead to fraud and abuse, dozens of state utility regulators say.
A group representing public service commissions in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories urged multiple committee leaders on Capitol Hill to reject a proposal to drop the Eligible Telecommunications Carrier designation. The ETC qualifications were created under federal law so state regulators could approve carriers for federal universal service programs, including Lifeline.
Tue, Mar 9th 2021 1:33pm
Karl Bode
To be clear: Space X s Starlink low-orbit satellite broadband service won t revolutionize the broadband industry. The service lacks the capacity to service dense urban or suburban areas, meaning it won t pose much of a threat to traditional cable and fiber providers. With a $100 monthly price tag and $500 hardware fee, it s not exactly a miracle cure for the millions of low-income Americans struggling to afford a broadband connection, either.
That said: if you re currently one of the 42 million Americans who lacks access to any broadband at all, the service, capping out at 100 Mbps, is going to be damn-near miraculous (if you can afford it). It s also going to be a major competitive challenge to the companies that not only compete for rural broadband attention (like WISPs, cellular providers, and last-gen satellite providers), but are busy elbowing out one another at the trough to grab a slice of taxpayer subsidies. Understandably, many of thes
Even as Starlink pushes toward a commercial launch of its fixed broadband satellite service, its parent company, SpaceX, is also pursuing a plan to connect Starlink s network to trucks, planes, ships and other types of relatively large moving vehicles.
Starlink s mobile-facing interests were outlined in an application for blanket-licensed Earth Stations in Motion, or ESIMs, filed on March 5 with the FCC. SpaceX believes authorization for a new class of ground-based components that would expand the range of broadband options available to moving vehicles would serve the public interest. This application takes the next step by seeking authority for ESIMs that will enable the extension of that network from homes and offices to vehicles, vessels, and aircraft, David Goldman, SpaceX s director of satellite policy, explained.