LTD Broadband Alone Fighting Minn. ETC Review Redo

Minnesota’s attorney general supported revisiting LTD Broadband’s eligible telecom carrier (ETC) designation. So did some local governments and consumer and municipal broadband advocates, in comments due Wednesday in docket M-21-133 at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. LTD urged the PUC to reject the request by Minnesota Telecom Alliance (MTA) and Minnesota Rural Electric Association (MREA) to revoke the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) winner’s ETC status (see 2205170058).

The PUC should open a proceeding, commented the Minnesota AG office’s Residential Utilities Division. "Allegations that an ETC may not be able to fulfill its federal Universal Service obligations because of a deficiency in its technical, managerial, or financial circumstances merit serious scrutiny, and it is important that interested parties -- including the ETC itself -- have an opportunity to analyze and respond to those allegations.” The PUC should force LTD to submit its FCC long-form application and consider the same requirement for all RDOF ETCs since the same concerns could apply, the division said. The PUC has authority to oversee and monitor ETC compliance with federal USF rules and impose conditions that don’t conflict with FCC rules, it said.

Allegations against LTD are “troubling” and the PUC has authority to reverse or modify prior decisions and revoke a carrier's ETC status, said the Minnesota Commerce Department. But the department wants to consider LTD and other parties' comments before recommending whether to open a proceeding, it said. "Bearing in mind that the FCC may approve or deny LTD’s long-form application at any time, the Commission may wish to consider how a positive or negative FCC determination for LTD would influence any new proceeding," including if it would moot it, the department said. “Since there remain many unserved and underserved broadband locations, and different funds for broadband deployment that impact each other, the importance of the Commission’s decision cannot be overstated.”

MTA and MREA’s petition “is nothing more than an improper and groundless attempt, motivated by competitive animosity, to relitigate a decision that Petitioners already lost,” countered LTD Broadband. The PUC “exhaustively analyzed” the company’s ETC petition one year ago and conditionally granted it with support from Minnesota Commerce and the AG office, it said. "Since then, LTD has fulfilled the conditions … and has been fulfilling Minnesota ETC compliance requirements." What MTA and MREA says will be new evidence is actually a “rehash” of old, rejected arguments, said the RDOF winner. The South Dakota PUC rejecting ETC status for LTD (see 2205240041), cited by the associations, is "far from an adequate basis to revisit this Commission's decision,” the company added: Petitioners are "on dubious legal ground," citing no authority allowing the PUC to revoke ETC designation.

Don’t ignore the public benefit of Minnesota receiving more than $311 million in RDOF funding, added LTD. “If the Commission determines that it is necessary to open any sort of proceeding at all in response to the Petition, the schedule and process should be far faster and more simplified than Petitioners’ proposal, which appears designed to impair LTD from meeting important deadlines.”

Three localities where LTD won funding raised concerns about the company. "LTD Broadband is essentially a small wireless broadband provider, who is proposing to provide wireline connections throughout Pine County without first understanding the topography, the current infrastructure, or demographics,” said the Minnesota county. "LTD Broadband's small presence and unproven track record in anything approaching a project this large, causes us considerable concern.”

Balkan Township isn’t "aware of any planning or pre-work being done by LTD Broadband in our area and no one has reached out to us to start a plan,” it told the PUC. The township is working with Paul Bunyan Communications to bring fiber, but LTD receiving RDOF funding hindered those efforts, the town commented. Similarly, Le Sueur County said it’s not aware of any work done and hasn't been able to set up a meeting with LTD. Existing ISPs are willing to bring service but are hesitant "as RDOF creates a barrier for them to access State and Federal grant dollars,” it said.

Funding LTD's expansion "would only delay quality connectivity for Minnesota’s un- and under-served communities,” warned Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), League of Rural Voters and AARP-Minnesota. “We are particularly concerned that LTD is not prepared to offer the high level of service required to meet the bar for receiving Universal Service Funds." Administrative failures in states including California, Iowa and South Dakota "are indicative of limited resources and poor planning, which calls into question the company’s ability to deliver service on the scale it has committed to operating on,” they said.

Allowing LTD to get RDOF money will make it tougher for other providers to get imminent federal infrastructure dollars, said the ILSR group. “Early indications suggest … that NTIA will defer to the FCC on areas already served by RDOF, making states loathe to support a different, even if superior, provider when LTD is already receiving federal funds to serve that area.”