Wi-Fi on a Mission

 Seems to good to be true, but apparently it's for real.

As you are probably aware, the FCC pulled the rug out from under applicants for school bus Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi hotspot lending for Funding Year 2025-2026. The Eligible Services List said those services were eligible, but three months into the funding year, the FCC reversed course and made those services ineligible for FY 2025-2026.

What's a school or library to do? You've only budgeted for your post-discount share, so you'll have to kill the program. But wait! Along comes a white knight in the form of Mission Telecom, who has announced that they'll provide service at whatever your post-discount cost would have been. 

Some caveats:

1. They use the T-Mobile network, so if you don't have a good T-Mobile signal in your area....
2. The discount is only available through June 30, 2026.
3. You still have to get out of your existing contract(s). This could be a major sticking point for school and libraries, but there's nothing Mission Telecom can do about it. Maybe you could beg for mercy from your existing carrier.

Kudos to Mission Telecom! 

MIBS in the crosshairs

 The new draft ESL seems to have it in for MIBS. The paragraph doesn't actually say, "We're thinking about dumping MIBS," but it does ask, "Are there any substantial benefits for funding MIBS?... Are there any cost savings and efficiencies for funding MIBS?" It seems like they're saying: "OK, we've had MIBS for a couple of years; is it doing any good?" That's rather threatening.

They also ask about narrowing the definition of MIBS so applicants don't face the question: "Is it MIBS or is it BMIC?" I'm all for clarifying the difference between MIBS and BMIC. 

Should they get rid of MIBS? No, I think they should expand it. Right now, if you buy an appliance that monitors your network, it's ineligible. But if you buy a service that monitors your network, it's eligible. And if that service installs an appliance on your network, that's eligible. Why?

I think the FCC should just make network monitoring eligible. It's an essential part of operating any network.

The FCC should widen the eligibility of Category Two equipment and services in general. Because with the ridiculously small budget that schools get for C2, there isn't enough to keep switches and APs upgraded, much less pay for maintenance or firewalls or monitoring. So just let applicants decide which of many needs will be covered by E-Rate, and which eligible items will be left unfunded. 

And for Pete's sake, raise the per-student budget for C2. We're way under the cap every year, and schools need more to cover eligible items.

Licentious maintenance

The draft ESL for 2026-2027 is out. The big change, of course, is the disappearance of school bus WiFi and WiFi hotspot lending. But there is an apparently subtle but actually significant change.

The Commission is proposing "to treat all currently eligible software- or remote-based services, including bug fixes, security patches, software-based technical assistance, and configuration changes...." like they currently treat licenses: allow applicants to purchase multi-year contracts as internal connections.

Why is that a big deal? SMARTnet. OK, most manufacturers' service contracts will be affected, but Cisco's SMARTnet is what jumped to mind. What typically happens now: a district signs a three-year contract covering their Cisco gear, then cost-allocates out the ineligible hardware replacement portion of the service, then divides the remainder by three and applies for one year of the eligible portion of the service. And that's in the ideal case where the contract starts on July 1st. Lots of contracts don't, so now you have to create two FRNs, each covering part of the year. And since you have to pay the whole amount of the three-year contract, you can't SPI years two and three; the district has to pay the full amount now and wait two years to get their reimbursement.

But now, applicants will just put in the whole eligible amount in the first year. What a relief.

It's also a good change because the line between licenses and service contracts was always pretty blurry. If you have to buy it in order for the access point to work, it's a license, right? But if you also get software updates and phone support with it, is it still just a license? Every year, I feared that USAC might force us to cost-allocate out any maintenance services from licenses.

It's a small change, but it makes the application process easier for applicants, so I say, "Bravo!" 

They're baaaaack

To no one's surprise, Consumers' Research has filed another petition for review with the Fifth Circuit. They had earlier stipulated to the dismissal of their petition in which the Supreme Court found the USF's funding mechanism to be constitutional. The new petition takes a slightly different approach, incorporating some of Justice Gorsuch's dissent to the Supreme Court's decision.

Still feels like a Hail Mary pass, but sometimes those work.... 

Bad, but not so bad

 I think we have our answer. Everyone's been wondering whether the FCC's recent decisions to stop funding WiFi hotspot lending and school bus WiFi would be retroactive, and if so, how retroactive.

We were expecting that FY 2025-2026 would be denied, and it seemed that the FCC had agreed that FY 2024-2025 would not be effective. Today, we got some confirmation of that.

The FCC released an amended Eligible Services List (ESL) for FY 2025-2026, making bus WiFi and hotspots ineligible. But they did not release an amended ESL for FY 2024-2025, so it seems that year's funding is safe.

I'm cranky about the change for FY 2025-2026. I mean, we went through the whole proposed ESL process and the FCC said, "This is what's eligible for this funding year." Based on that ESL, districts made decisions on what they could afford, and were forced to sign a contract before filing the Form 471. Now six months after signing a contract, and three months after the service has started, the FCC says, "We've changed our minds; no funding on these services. Tough luck if you're stuck with contracts you can no longer afford."

Removal of items from the ESL should be phased in over years, so districts aren't left holding the bag. Removal definitely shouldn't be retroactive. 

Well, at least it wasn't as retroactive as it could have been. 

Taking the "universal" out of "universal service"

Well, it's official: today the FCC voted to toss WiFi hotspot lending and school bus WiFi out of the E-Rate program.

I have to say, the Commission has a point. I'm no lawyer, but my reading of the law  is pretty clear: Congress authorized service to "schools and classrooms" and "libraries," and you have to stretch pretty hard to make that include school buses or student/patron homes.

But it's a shame. School bus WiFi is very useful in rural areas, where the bus rides are long. And it's not such a huge stretch to treat school buses as annexes to schools. Just treat them like any swing space, where students are only present for part of the day. Maybe we just need school districts to start calling their buses "mobile classrooms" and getting them funded that way. I don't see anything in the law that defines what a classroom has to be.

Hotspot lending really contributed to the overall goal of universal service. The hotspots provided Internet access to households without Internet service. Perhaps the E-Rate is an odd choice to bring Internet to those households (looking at you, Lifeline), but it worked. And it had local control on decisions over who needed a hotspot, which is much more accurate than having a national organization make those decisions.

More disturbing was the process that the Commission used to reach their decision. There was no comment period, so they couldn't hear what the public thought of these two programs. I don't like decisions made with no public input.

And the sudden change will catch schools and libraries flat-footed: many have signed multi-year contracts that anticipated E-Rate funding. Now the E-Rate funding is gone, so the cost of those contracts will skyrocket. The Commission should have had a more orderly (and slower) transition.

It makes me worry about the Delete!Delete!Delete! initiative, where decisions are being similarly made with no public input. That's been fine so far, since the Commission has only been trimming outdated rules about telegraphs, pay phones, rabbit ears, etc. But now I fear that the FCC may decide to remove meaningful rules without public comment. 

Cultural side note: How many people under 40 know what "rabbit ears" means in this context? "Telegraph" is even more outdated, but most people have heard the word used. And while people under 30 have probably never seen a pay phone in the wild, they'll at least have heard of them. But "rabbit ears"? I'll bet that piece of jargon is a mystery to the young. (And yes, if you're in your 30s, you count as young in my book.) 

Education will stop at the school door

Well, it looks like the end of hotspots and bus Wi-Fi. Chairman Carr has asked the Commission to revers the school bus Wi-Fi program and the hotspot lending program. These changes are not unexpected, but this announcement makes it sound like it's going to happen right away, so it's unclear whether funding requests for FY 2025-2026 will go down. It seems likely, since approval of those requests has been held up. It doesn't seem fair, though, to pull the rug out from under applicants after the start of the funding year.

Will we get a chance to say what we think about this? The announcement makes it sound like the vote will take place without public comment, but the regs say, "The bureau or office then should seek comment on the petition via public notice. Unless otherwise specified by the bureau or office, the filing deadline for responsive pleadings to a docketed petition for declaratory ruling will be 30 days from the release date of the public notice, and the default filing deadline for any replies will be 15 days thereafter."