BDAC Seeks Harmony After Clearing Some Divisive Working Group Reports

As the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee prepares to harmonize its working group reports, some members said the final act isn’t fully worked out. Local and utility members raised concerns about the state model code approved at Wednesday’s meeting with seven nays (see 1804250064). Some members in interviews cited collegiality and genuine efforts for consensus.

“The first inkling of reconciliation that I heard about was Wednesday,” said Andy Huckaba, a councilman from Lenexa, Kansas. Details need to be worked out, and the plan is to hold a call of working group chairs and vice-chairs this week, Huckaba said. “There was some confusion around the room about that” at Wednesday’s meeting, he said. He understands the reason for reconciliation: parts of the state and municipal codes don’t agree with each other and must be harmonized for consistent recommendations, he said. Huckaba expects the process to be like a legislative conference between two chambers, he said.

"The process from here is to harmonize the various workgroup reports and create a final report to be discussed at the next BDAC meeting,” said TDS Telecom Director-Federal Affairs Bob DeBroux. “There is still much work.”

There doesn’t appear to be a date for the final report, said Kristian Stout, who represented the International Center for Law & Economics at last week’s meeting. “We are talking about that now, though, and it’s in the foreseeable future,” he said. “The immediate work we need to complete will involve finalizing some provisions of the model state code that we discussed extensively last week, and then harmonizing that code with the model municipal code which passed without changes last week.”

The rates and fees report presented last week was preliminary, said Richard Bennett, member of BDAC’s city code work group. “There’s still work to be done on refining the financial models and making recommendations for streamlining deployment.” Then, the FCC must “decide what do to with BDAC’s work in terms of orders and funding,” he said. “I expect the easy part is done, but we can’t really declare victory until the broadband situation in rural America is substantially better than it is today. BDAC is just one piece of the puzzle.”

National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson said "the BDAC conversations do not seem to be heading in a direction that effectively expands broadband access to the 24 million rural Americans separated by the digital divide.” Every member "should have the opportunity to fully review and air their positions before the entire BDAC," he said. "Unfortunately, that has not been the way the process has played out, and that’s not an effective way to build trust, establish consensus, and manage a committee so that it reaches a successful outcome.”

State Code Concerns

TDS’s DeBroux voted no on the state model code Wednesday “because I thought there were many issues that needed further discussion and development, not because I specifically opposed any individual pieces,” he said. “I think that discussion will happen in putting together the final report, and I thought it was premature to endorse the content of the report.”

Huckaba didn’t support five of 13 articles of the state model code, so he joined the other two local officials voting no, he said. Huckaba has concerns with sections on a network support infrastructure register (Article 3), rights of access to existing infrastructure (4), deployment of communications facilities (9), state franchise agreements (10) and a state broadband infrastructure manager (13), he said. Huckaba worries about “unfunded mandates,” he said. “If that all falls down to the locals, and they’re not able to recover that cost, then that means we have to reallocate resources from some other place.” The documents say local fees should be cost-based in some parts, and caps the fees, but locals don’t want to pay less than cost, he said. Even if caps are removed, the state code doesn’t say how to define cost, he said.

Until the BDAC issues its final report, it's not too late to address concerns, said Huckaba. Codes won’t be binding, but rather “recommendations” to state and local governments, which may decide to use only pieces of them, he said. Some recommendations could become rules, but that’s up to the commission, he said.

The proposed state code “creates new burdens and fails to take meaningful steps to expand broadband access in rural America,” Matheson said. Only two of 13 articles address rural deployment, he said. It fails to recognize “negative consumer impacts of assigning pole attachment processes and rates to electric co-ops,” he added. Utilities are “severely underrepresented on the BDAC panel” and the group’s proposals “will disadvantage the electric utility industry while doing little to help modernize the rural American homes and businesses,” Matheson said. Electric utilities own 65-70 percent of poles that will carry broadband infrastructure, with two of the committee's 30 seats, he said.

BDAC got unanimous agreement on the municipal model code -- with support from all three local members -- through “a lot of hard work” and compromises on each side, Huckaba said. “We came out with something pretty good.” Deferring the controversial question of how to set rates to an ad hoc committee contributed to the accord, as did the late addition to the working group of David Young, a right-of-way manager from Lincoln, Nebraska, said Huckaba, who chairs the rates committee.

Don’t believe BDAC “naysayers,” Huckaba said. “Everybody is there to improve broadband and get broadband out to everybody in the country,” Huckaba said. “There is not a person in the room who doesn’t believe that. As long as we can keep reminding ourselves of that common purpose … we can do a lot of good.”