FCC extends comments period on US broadband initiatives

Media Investment
FCC extends comments period on US broadband initiatives
Michelle Clancy
| 18 August 2018

The US telecoms regulator has provided a five-business-day extension for comments and reply comments on its Fourteenth Broadband Deployment report, which describes the state of broadband throughout the country.

fcc 18 august 2018It will be used by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make policy concerning competition, media consolidation, streaming services and more on a go-forward basis, once published in early 2019.

The extension is to accommodate the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, which begins sundown 9 Sept.; the initial comment deadline was 10 Sept. The new comment dates for the deployment report are 17 Sept and 1 Oct.

Various advocacy groups including Public Knowledge, INCOMPAS, Common Cause, The Greenlining Institute, Communications Workers of America, Benton Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, TEXALTEL, Federation of Internet Service Providers of America, and Northwest Telecommunications Association jointly sought an extension of initial comments on both the report and competition to 27 Sept; however, the commission said that it would need feedback before that in order to make a mandated deadline for a communications market report to be delivered by the end of the year.

The news comes as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai went before congress to discuss the broadband coverage maps the FCC will use to decide where to allocate $4.5 billion in rural broadband subsidies.

The plan is to bring 4G LTE service to rural Americans, to support everything from local business networks to news and entertainment access.

Pai told the Senate Commerce Committee that the commission is doing its best to get an accurate view of where 4G does and does not already exist, to avoid subsidised, redundant overbuilds. The FCC has extended its investigation period in which to do that by 90 days to 28 November.