Justice Settles With Alleged USF Scammer

By
( )
published

Alaska DigiTel has agreed to pay $1.56 million to
settle allegations it had submitted false claims for money from the FCC's
Universal Service Fund.

That is the multi-billion-dollar subsidy for
telecommunications service in areas where it is not economical to deliver.

They allegedly submitted false claims to the USF's low
income support program over a four-year period between 2004 and 2008.

The FCC is in the process of reforming the fund to both
migrate it to broadband subsidies and reduce the possibility of waste,
fraud and abuse.

The settlement resulted from a whistleblower claim that the
company was signing up subs who did not qualify. That whistleblower will
get $260,274 from the settlement.

John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.