Information Collection Approved by the Office of Management and Budget

AGENCY:

Federal Communications Commission.

ACTION:

Notice.

SUMMARY:

The Federal Communications Commission (Commission) has received Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval, on an emergency basis, for a new, one-time information collection pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. An agency may not conduct or sponsor a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number, and no person is required to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid control number. Comments concerning the accuracy of the burden estimates and any suggestions for reducing the burden should be directed to the person listed in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section below.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Contact Cathy Williams, Cathy.Williams@fcc.gov, (202) 418-2918.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

The total annual reporting burdens and costs for the respondents are as follows:

OMB Control Number: 3060-1251.

OMB Approval Date: February 7, 2018.

OMB Expiration Date: February 28, 2021.

Title: Mobility Fund Phase II Challenge Process.

Form Number: N/A.

Respondents: Business or other for-profit entities, not-for-profit institutions, and state, local or tribal governments.

Number of Respondents and Responses: 500 respondents; 500 responses.

Estimated Time per Response: 204 hours for challengers; 71 for challenged parties.

Frequency of Response: One-time reporting requirement.

Total Annual Burden: 78,725 hours.

Total Annual Cost: None.

Obligation to Respond: Required to obtain or retain benefits. Statutory authority for the currently approved information collection is contained in sections 154, 254, and 303(r) of the Communications Act, as amended, 47 U.S.C. 4, 254, 303(r).

Nature and Extent of Confidentiality: To the extent the information submitted pursuant to this information collection is determined to be confidential, it will be protected by the Commission. If a respondent seeks to have information collected pursuant to this information collection withheld from public inspection, the respondent may request confidential treatment pursuant to section .459 of the Commission's rules for such information. See 47 CFR 0.459.

Privacy Act Impact Assessment: No impact(s).

Needs and Uses: In 2011, the Commission established the Mobility Fund, which consists of two phases. Mobility Fund Phase I provided one-time universal service support payments to immediately accelerate deployment of mobile broadband services. MF-II will use a reverse auction to provide ongoing universal service support payments to continue to advance deployment of such services. In its February 2017 Mobility Fund II Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (MF-II Report and Order and/or FNPRM) (FCC 17-11), the Commission adopted the rules and framework for moving forward expeditiously with the MF-II auction and stated that, prior to the auction, it would establish a map of areas presumptively eligible for MF-II support based on the most recently available FCC Form 477 mobile wireless coverage data, and provide a limited timeframe for parties to challenge those initial determinations during the pre-auction process. The Commission sought comment in the accompanying Mobility Fund II FNPRM on how to best design a robust, targeted MF-II challenge process that efficiently resolves disputes about the areas eligible for MF-II support.

In its August 2017 Order on Reconsideration and Second Report and Order (Challenge Process Order) (FCC 17-102), the Commission (1) reconsidered its earlier decision to use FCC Form 477 data to compile the map of areas presumptively eligible for MF-II support and decided it would instead conduct a new, one-time data collection with specified data parameters tailored to MF-II to determine the areas in which there is deployment of qualified LTE that will be used (together with high-cost disbursement data available from the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC)) for this purpose, and (2) adopted a streamlined challenge process that will efficiently resolve disputes about areas deemed presumptively ineligible for MF-II support. The map of areas presumptively eligible for MF-II support will serve as the starting point for the challenge process pursuant to which an interested party (challenger) may initiate a challenge with respect to one or more areas initially deemed ineligible for MF-II support (i.e., areas not listed on the Commission's map of areas presumptively eligible for MF-II support) and challenged parties can respond to challenges.

A challenger seeking to initiate a challenge of one or more areas initially deemed ineligible in the Commission's map of areas presumptively eligible for MF-II support may do via the online challenge portal developed by USAC for this purpose (the USAC portal). For each state, a challenger must (1) identify the area(s) it seeks to challenge, (2) submit detailed proof of a lack of unsubsidized, qualified 4G LTE coverage in each challenged area in the form of actual outdoor speed test data collected using the standardized parameters specified by the Commission in the Challenge Process Order and any other parameters the Commission or the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Wireline Competition Bureau (the Bureaus) may implement, and (3) certify its challenge. The USAC system will validate a challenger's evidence using an automated challenge validation process. Once all valid challenges have been identified, a challenged party that chooses to respond to any valid challenge(s) may submit additional data via the online USAC portal during the established response window. A challenged party may submit technical information that is probative regarding the validity of a challenger's speed tests, including speed test data and other device-specific data collected from transmitter monitoring software or, alternatively, may submit its own speed test data that conforms to the same standards and requirements specified by the Commission and the Bureaus for challengers.

In conjunction with the qualified 4G LTE data separately collected pursuant to OMB 3060-1242 that will be used to create the map of areas presumptively eligible for MF-II support, the information collected under this MF-II challenge process collection will enable the Commission to efficiently resolve disputes concerning the eligibility or ineligibility of an area initially deemed ineligible for MF-II support and establish the final map of areas eligible for such support, thereby furthering the Commission's goal of targeting MF-II support to areas that lack adequate mobile voice and broadband coverage absent subsidies through a transparent process.

The Commission received approval from OMB for the information collection requirements contained in OMB 3060-1251 on February 7, 2018.