COVID-19: Recommendations for Broadband & Telecom Providers These are unusual times, as COVID-19 has disrupted daily life and business operations across the country. In doing so, the current pandemic has highlighted the need for reliable, robust, fully supported broadband networks. Vantage Point offers the following recommendations and best practices for maintaining and supporting your networks … Read more
FCC’s Supply Chain Data Collection All Universal Service Fund (USF) recipients that were eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) as of December 31, 2019, must respond to the mandatory Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Supply Chain Data Collection (Data Collection) due no later than April 22, 2020. Other USF and service providers that are not ETCs are also … Read more
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) & Copyright Infringement On December 19, 2019, a jury awarded Sony $1 billion in damages against Cox Communications after ruling that Cox failed to protect its network against copyright infringement by the ISP’s subscribers. Generally, ISPs are allowed safe harbor under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, an earlier … Read more
Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) is now Commercially Available On January 27, 2020, the FCC released its Public Notice, DA 20-110, in which the FCC has announced the completion of initial Commercial Deployment (ICD) phase and the approval of the Spectrum Access System (SAS) services of CommScope, Federated Wireless, Google, and Sony for Commercial Operations. … Read more
FCC Adds Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) to January Agenda On January 8th, 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a News Release announcing the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which would provide $20.4 billion in high-cost universal service support over 10 years, has been added to the January 30th Open Commission meeting. The Report … Read more
Bureau Establishes an Eligible Locations Adjustment Process (ELAP) On November 12, 2019, the Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) released an order creating a voluntary process to review the defined deployment obligations (locations and associated support) on a state-by-state basis when the total number of actual locations in the eligible areas is less than the number of … Read more
Lifeline New Low-Income Program Rules The Lifeline program was originally established in 1985 to ensure that low -income consumers had access to affordable, landline telephone service. Today, the Lifeline program provides qualifying low-income consumers discounts on voice or broadband Internet access service, as well as in a bundled service. Currently, qualifying low-income consumers receive a … Read more
Disaster Recovery Planning From blizzards and flooding to wildfires and hurricanes, 2019 has been a year of weather extremes across the United States. Each season brings new challenges and new opportunities. One challenge we hope you have not had to deal with is the occurrence of a natural disaster in your area. We want to … Read more
Court Upholds Majority of Restoring Internet Freedom Order On October 1, 2019, in the case of Mozilla Corporation v. Federal Communications Commission et al., the U.S. Court of Appeals (“the Court”) confirmed a majority of the FCC rule changes included in the 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (“RIF Order”) which overturned the prior FCC’s 2015 … Read more
USDA Releases Details on the 2nd Round of ReConnect The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has released the highly anticipated details for the second round of funding for the ReConnect Program. The ReConnect Program will provide up to $512M in loan and grant funding to assist with building broadband infrastructure in rural areas of … Read more
Order on Reconsideration to be considered on October 25th Open Commission Meeting On October 4, 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) issued an Order on Reconsideration regarding Measuring CAF Recipients’ Broadband Performance (the requirement commonly referred to as “CAF Performance Testing” or “Performance Testing”) that clarifies and modifies certain portions and parameters of the Performance … Read more
