FCC RDOF subsidy rules: USTelecom has no legitimate complaint

USTelecom on RDOF Impact: When the ILEC is No Longer the Carrier of Last Resort - Telecompetitor: The upshot is that while the CAF II auction diverted a relatively small portion of subsidies that would normally have gone to the price cap carriers to other entities, the RDOF has the potential to trigger a more dramatic shift away from the price cap carriers. As the report authors, note, “[c]ompletely shutting off access to federal universal service support to an incumbent in favor of a competitor is a new frontier in the evolution of the support mechanism.” As subsidies for price cap territories go to companies other than the incumbents, “the ILEC should be relieved of all federal and state obligations to provide service in such areas,” the authors argue. (Emphasis added)

USTelecom has nothing to complain about here. Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers have no obligation to provide advanced telecom service (ATS) to all premises in their service territories -- only voice telephone service. That's thanks to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's 2018 repeal of the previous Obama era FCC's Open Internet rulemaking in 2015 classifying ATS as a telecommunications utility under Title II of the federal Communications Act and thus subject to universal service and non-discrimination mandates. The current FCC instead opted to classify ATS as an information service under Title I of the statute, turning the calendar back to 1990 and the days of CompuServe and AOL.