Rural Telecom Execs, Other House Hearing Witnesses Eye USF Revamp, Permitting Legislation

House Small Business Republicans’ memo on the hearing doesn’t touch on either of those issues, instead focusing on the need to continue improving data that the FCC and other entities collect on broadband deployments. The effectiveness of the Agriculture Department’s ReConnect program and other federal broadband programs “is often undermined by inaccurate or outdated broadband mapping data,” the memo said. “Many rural areas are left behind … because service gaps remain invisible to decision makers.”

Kristi Westbrock, CEO of Consolidated Telephone Co. in Brainerd, Minnesota, highlights in her testimony that mapping is an ongoing issue. The 2020 Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability Act has pushed the FCC to make “substantial strides” in improving collected deployment data, “but structural problems persist,” Westbrock says. She calls for the FCC to consider revising reporting standards for the national broadband map “to reflect proven technological capabilities on an objective basis.” She also wants the commission to “create public ‘heat maps’ highlighting where numerous challenges and crowdsourcing concerns arise in an area where coverage claims look questionable.”

Jackson-Furman emphasizes that as “Congress looks to modernize USF, finding a solution to the affordability question must be part of the discussion.” USF “helps ensure that our prices remain competitive with more urban areas of the country, but even then, the cost of broadband is out of reach for some lower-income Americans,” says Jackson-Furman, who will testify on behalf of WTA, a group representing small providers. She notes that WK&T also participated in the FCC’s now-lapsed affordable connectivity program. Nex-Tech CEO Jimmy Todd likewise urges Congress to “ensure broadband is affordable for all Americans,” although he doesn’t offer a specific solution. Some backers of the defunct affordable connectivity program have been eyeing melding it with USF’s Lifeline program and maintaining the latter’s narrower eligibility rules (see 2404170066).

Westbrock focuses on how a USF revamp should redo the program’s contribution factor. Congress must ensure “that contribution responsibility” as part of a revised funding mechanism “is shared reasonably and equitably among all users of the underlying networks that universal services seeks to promote.” She also wants Congress to ensure that “all those that benefit from broadband networks help to recover the costs of deploying and operating them.”

Westbrock specifically highlights the American Broadband Deployment Act, which the House Commerce Committee cleared during the last Congress without Democratic support, as legislation that Capitol Hill should pursue again. That measure “proposed streamlining review requirements [for broadband deployment plans,] particularly for projects along existing, previously disturbed rights-of-way,” she says. Her company “and other broadband providers across the country would strongly support renewed efforts in this Congress to modernize these processes and speed delivery of high-speed internet” to unserved communities.

Todd says many “small businesses and cooperatives still face burdensome permitting processes that delay builds and discourage investment. Permitting delays drive up costs, waste resources, and create unnecessary administrative hurdles. Congress can help by streamlining these processes so providers can deploy fiber faster and more efficiently.”

Farmer Jeff Vander Werff more generically urges Congress to “find a better answer” for connecting rural areas to broadband than SpaceX-owned Starlink and other services that are often “cost prohibitive [in regions] where poverty levels can match those of our most populated cities.”