Charter Communications said it has seen no reason for the FCC to deny its request that the commission not open up census blocks in New York State for government-funded broadband buildouts where Charter is already under a state mandate to build out 25/3 high-speed broadband per a settlement with the State's Public Service Commission.
It was responding to comments on its request that the FCC exclude its census block from funding for potential overbuilds of that mandated buildout, just as the FCC is excluding subsidies where government money is already going to broadband buildouts, via the USDA's Rural Utilities Service subsidies, for example.
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While some critics argue Charter's request is anticompetitive, the operator said that the Rural Digital Opportunities Fund (RDOF) is not meant to be competitive. "The purpose of the universal service fund is not to subsidize competition, but to support the deployment of service where there is none," it said, service Charter is already providing under a government, albeit state, mandate.
Charter also said the petition's critics "ignore some crucial facts," which are that "a) Charter has nearly completed deployment to many of the census blocks at issue, and (b) Charter’s allowance to make substitutions to the addresses it will serve to meet the commitment is constrained—although Charter is permitted to make some discretionary changes to that list (which are strictly capped in quantity), it does not anticipate doing so in a way that would cause it to no longer serve the specific census blocks that are the subject of the Petition."
The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association said that because Charter did not file a petition to reconsider the RDOF, the petition is premature because the FCC has yet to finalize the census blocks eligible for the RDOF funds.
But Charter said if it waited until that list was finalized and the auction process underway, "the Commission could not consider how to address the more than 2,000 census blocks at issue here without delaying or otherwise disrupting that process."
Related: New York Rep Raps Charter Over RDOF Waiver Request
As part of its deal to get its Time Warner Cable deal approved by New York State, a process that as a long and contentious one, Charter agreed to New York PSC broadband buildout conditions.
The FCC, in proposing its Rural Digital Opportunities Fund, which is billions of dollars for broadband buildouts, said that money could not go to places where federal or state money from other programs was already going to subsidize service, the idea being to avoid putting funds into overbuilding areas where high-speed broadband was already on the way. But the frameworks' census block requirements do currently allow for Charter to be overbuilt.
