Smith Bagley asked the FCC for a waiver...

Smith Bagley asked the FCC for a waiver of its final Lifeline biennial audit plan, which requires an independent auditor to randomly select one month during the audio period and three states or territories where the eligible telecom carrier (ETC) is designated. “SBI is the only Lifeline ETC that operates in exactly three states, and as a result, would be the only multi-state operator to be required to have 100 percent of its operations audited,” the ETC said in a filing posted Thursday in WC docket 11-42 (http://bit.ly/RdB6ML). “The underlying purpose of the rule -- namely, to review a sample of a Lifeline ETC’s operations -- does not require an audit of 100 percent of SBI’s operations across three states in order to accomplish that purpose.”