[1st-mile-nm] Fwd: Advocates worry FCC changes to Lifeline could hit Indian Country hard

[Richard Lowenberg]

Forwarded from the Navajo-Hopi Observer:

https://www.nhonews.com/news/2017/dec/05/advocates-worry-fcc-changes-lifeline-could-hit-ind/

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving to 
rein in a low-cost telephone service for low-income customers that 
critics say will hit Indian Country hard if fully implemented.

But FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and other supporters say the reforms would 
close the digital divide between urban and rural Americans by ending 
ongoing waste, fraud and abuse in the program that serves more than 12 
million people nationwide — and 212,630 people in Arizona as of August.

The Lifeline program, established under the Reagan administration, 
offers a subsidy of $9.25 a month to low-income residents, with 
residents of tribal areas eligible to receive an additional $25 subsidy 
per month.

A Government Accountability Office Report earlier this year found a 
number of problems with the current program, including the FCC’s 
inability to verify how many of the 12.3 million people getting Lifeline 
were using it as a secondary phone service. The GAO also said it was 
only able to confirm two-thirds of customers were getting government 
support, like Medicaid or food stamps, critical to participation in the 
program.

The commission voted 3-2 last week for a series of immediate changes — 
including a shift in how tribal funds are allocated — and a call for 
comment on several proposed changes that include an overall budget cap 
and the elimination of “non-facilities based” providers — or wireless 
resellers – from the program.

“Far too many Americans lack the affordable broadband options that many 
of us take for granted,” Pai said in a prepared statement after the 
vote. “And for far too long, policymakers have let unscrupulous wireless 
resellers waste Lifeline funding rather than demand these funds go to 
support real digital opportunity and infrastructure in underserved 
communities.”

Pai noted the deeply disturbing problems”cited in the GAO report and 
comments from a Democratic lawmaker during hearings this summer that 
Lifeline’s problems are serious and persistent — and the time for action 
is now.

But critics panned the GAO report, which they said was based on numbers 
from 2014, a year before FCC reforms of the Lifeline program went into 
effect. Linda Sherry, the director of National Priorities for Consumer 
Action, added that the report’s “supposed one-third-is-fraudulent number 
… was based only on a small sample and cannot be extrapolated to the 
whole program.”

A GAO official who testified to the Senate on the report laughed at 
those assertions, which he called “a red herring.”

“Nice try,” said Seto Badoyan, GAO director of forensic audits and 
investigative service.

“The fact that the data is from 2014 is irrelevant,” Badoyan said. 
“Whatever limited changes have occurred to the Lifeline program from the 
FCC or USAC (Universal Service Administrative Co., the nonprofit that 
manages Lifeline funding) or the telephone carriers would not have 
changed any of the data analysis we did.

One change that will affect tribes immediately is the new allocation of 
the $25 a month tribal subsidy. It will not be restricted to tribes in 
rural areas, defined as being outside “an urbanized area or urban 
cluster area with a population equal to or greater than 25,000.”

Pai said the change was aimed at tribes in areas like Tulsa and Reno. 
But Brian Tagaban, who works for Sacred Wind Communications, a 
facilities-based telecommunications provider that serves the Navajo 
Nation, said the change in the definition of urban and rural is a great 
concern to us.

“I would say 80 percent of our customers are Lifeline customers,” said 
Tagaban, who formerly worked with the Navajo Telecommunications 
Regulatory Commission. “We serve the Eastern Agency of the Navajo 
Nation, which is a checkerboard of different land statuses.”

“We are worried that they could exclude some of these areas and that 
they won’t be able to access tribal Lifeline benefits,” Tagaban said. 
Navajo Nation officials did not return calls seeking comment.
Advocates are more concerned about a proposed change that would limit 
Lifeline subsidies to “facilities-based providers,” cutting wireless 
service providers out of the program. Critics said that could eliminate 
four of the five major providers currently offering Lifeline.

“There are no other companies out there that can provide … or are 
willing to provide … this service to millions of Lifeline customers,” 
Sherry said. Rural areas often don’t have access to major providers, she 
said.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson, who joined 55 other lawmakers in a letter 
opposing the FCC changes, said in a statement after the vote that 
instead of improving service, the commission had taken “a step backward 
by restricting mobile and internet access to hundreds of thousands of 
people, especially those who live in rural and tribal lands.”

Kim Lehrman, the president of a Iowa service provider enTouch Wireless, 
that serves around 3,000 Lifeline customers in Arizona, said the change 
“would disproportionately impact Native American tribes,” due to a lack 
of competition with rural providers.

Lehrman said she fears she could lose customers if the proposed changes 
go through.

“We feel like we provide a very high quality of service to people with a 
tremendous amount of need,” she said. “We hope to find a way to continue 
to provide these services.”



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Richard Lowenberg, Executive Director
1st-Mile Institute     505-603-5200
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504,
rl at 1st-mile.org     www.1st-mile.org
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