LTD Opposes Lifting Stay on Minn. PUC Review

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission shouldn’t resume proceedings to consider revoking LTD Broadband’s eligible telecom carrier (ETC) designation, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) winner said in comments posted Monday (docket 22-221). Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), industry and public interest groups urged the PUC to lift a Jan. 18 stay that was meant to give time for the FCC to rule on LTD’s appeal of the commission denying the company’s RDOF long-form application (see 2308140032). About seven months since the Minnesota stay, the FCC hasn’t decided on LTD’s appeal. Minnesota Telecom Association (MTA) and Minnesota Rural Electric Association (MREA) seek “to embroil the Commission in entirely unnecessary proceedings on the basis of speculation, inconsistent logic, and a fundamentally inaccurate characterization of the posture of LTD’s application for” RDOF support at the FCC, commented LTD: MTA and MREA are trying “to extinguish arbitrarily LTD’s current ETC status as a means of prejudicing LTD’s position in matters still pending before the FCC.” The RDOF winner claimed the associations’ true motivation is to get "funding under alternative programs in lieu of LTD." The FCC hasn’t completed reviewing LTD’s appeal, so “there is no reason to change the posture of this case and require the state and LTD to spend considerable time and expense on further proceedings that may prove to be entirely unnecessary,” LTD said. “Nor does the prospect of future broadband funding create any immediacy requiring that the current stay be lifted. Because LTD has not been authorized to receive support for any RDOF locations, these areas remain eligible for funding through other programs to the extent not benefiting from other subsidy programs or from more recent deployment of unsubsidized broadband service by LTD or other broadband providers.” Replies are due Aug. 21 at the Minnesota PUC.