Pierce (Image courtesy of: KTUU-TV)

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s choice to lead his newly created Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) was arrested last week by the FBI and charged with a multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme.

Elizabeth Pierce, former CEO of Quintillion and ex-chair of the BDAC from its start until September, 2017 surrendered to authorities in New York City. Pierce was charged with wire fraud for allegedly tricking investors into putting more than $250 million into an Alaskan fiber optic project based on guaranteed revenue contracts prosecutors claimed Pierce forged herself to reassure investors Quintillion would benefit from telecom traffic revenue the fiber network never had.

“To realize her plan to build a fiber optic system that would service Alaska and connect it to the lower 48 states, Pierce convinced two investment companies that she had secured signed contracts that would supposedly generate hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed future revenue from the system,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman. “Those sales agreements were worthless because the customers had not signed them. Pierce had forged counterparty signatures on contract after contract.”

To raise adequate funds to support Quintillion’s ambitious fiber optic network buildout, Pierce frequently appealed to outside investors. Several wanted evidence the fiber network would attract enough business from telecom companies to justify an investment. Pierce was accused of faking contracts with Alaska’s telecommunications companies from 2015 until 2017 to provide reassurance companies were committed to spend at least $24 million in traffic charges the first year the network began operation.

Pierce’s alleged scheme fell apart when Quintillion began invoicing clients based on the fake contracts. At least one protested, claiming it did not use Quintillion’s network. A subsequent internal investigation allegedly founds dozens of phony contracts kept in Pierce’s Google Drive account, with at least 78 moved to the service’s trash bin 48 hours before investigators began searching Pierce’s computer. Prosecutors were able to recover the deleted documents with a search warrant presented to Google.

Pierce may have attracted FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s attention after publicly complaining the permitting process in Alaska took longer than building fiber cables from scratch and shipping them from Europe. Out of more than 380 applicants, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai picked Pierce in 2017 to head his new broadband advisory committee, tasked with eliminating or streamlining regulations and making life easier for broadband providers to persuade them to expand broadband rollouts.

“The Commission was fortunate to have an excellent and deep pool of applicants to serve on the BDAC,” Chairman Pai noted on the occasion of introducing the BDAC and Pierce to the public. Critics argue Pai’s BDAC has been stacked with industry, industry-funded or industry-friendly committee members that are influencing most of the public policy recommendations issued in the group’s final recommendations. At least two city officials resigned over concerns their views were not being taken seriously.

Pierce resigned from Quintillion in August 2017 and from the BDAC a month later for  “personal reasons.”

KTUU-TV in Anchorage reports Quintillion’s ex-CEO was charged with wire fraud. Nevertheless, the Alaskan fiber project is trying to carry on. (3:11)

The head of a state-funded group with direct ties to the Massachusetts governor’s office told local officials in New Marlborough that the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) “believes in cable companies” and is favoring one — Charter Communications, with an exclusive offer to invest millions in taxpayer dollars to entice Charter to bring its Spectrum cable service to town, while telling would-be competitors the money is only available to Charter Communications.

MBI was created in 2008, originally tasked with investing $50 million in state funds to help resolve the digital divide between eastern and western Massachusetts. MBI also manages the publicly owned, middle mile fiber optic network that towns in western Massachusetts are depending on as part of their plans to connect local residents to the internet.

In 2015, MBI suddenly yanked support for WiredWest, the region’s most robust and credible player in connecting residential homes and businesses. The group had spent several years organizing and educating some two dozen largely rural communities, and was well on its way to constructing a public broadband network for the towns that agreed to sign on to the project. Since 2015, a series of political disputes, bureaucracy, and confusion has stalled broadband expansion.

Peter Larkin, MBI’s board chairman, has been roundly criticized in many western Massachusetts communities for continuing MBI’s slow and cumbersome bureaucracy, frequent policy shifts, and most recently playing favorites with cable companies. Ignoring his own organization’s systemic failures and bureaucratic roadblocks, Larkin has recently leveraged community frustration with the slow pace of progress as an excuse to hand two of the nation’s largest cable operators public taxpayer dollars to complete a project MBI was directly responsible for stalling.

Larkin

Under the latest proposal, outlined last Friday, Charter Communications would receive $3.1 million to expand Spectrum cable service to at least 96% of the community of New Marlborough. Originally, the town was responsible for $1.44 million in cost sharing with the state, a substantial sum for a community with a population just over 1,500 residents. Larkin last week offered to split the cost to the town, with the town’s share reduced to $720,000 — payable directly to Charter.

“The state is willing to cut the gap in half to make this project go,” Larkin said.

But that deal appears to be good only if the town selects Charter Communications. Over the last year, MBI has been allocating public taxpayer dollars towards private cable and phone companies, especially Comcast and Charter, to get the companies to agree to expand their cable systems in areas both have ignored for decades. WiredWest’s proposal made towns partners in the project. Larkin’s offer suggests taxpayers should pay up to 50% of the expansion costs, while Charter keeps 100% of the revenue and profits.

In the past, MBI’s financial carrots have been enough to get the two cable companies to expand using state matching funds alone, but as the town’s Broadband Committee Chairman Richard Long told the Berkshire Eagle after the meeting, he thinks this is the first time an unserved town in central or western Massachusetts will have to contribute local taxpayer funds as well just to get service from a cable company.

Larkin’s hard sell for Charter raised eyebrows among some in the town, especially after Larkin offered to use state funds to also finance their $720,000 portion of the deal over as much as a decade. Larkin claimed he wanted to get the project done and wanted to be helpful.

“The state may spend moneys or engage in other activities that benefit or incentivize private businesses in order to promote such [economic] development and it may authorize or partner with its cities and towns to do likewise,” Larkin recently wrote in a letter to towns offering to help them get negotiations going with the cable companies.

Town resident Dave Travis called Larkin’s offer something else.

“Call me a whistleblower, concerned citizen, activist for fairness, justice and democracy, but for Massachusetts Broadband Institute to show such blatant preferential treatment [to Charter] when there are qualified, experienced local options feels like corruption, and it needs some serious daylight,” Travis wrote.

WiredWest’s Tim Newman exposed just how far Larkin was willing to go to bat for Charter.

“Is the generosity you’re presenting to our town on behalf of Charter the same generosity if the town were to build its own network?” he asked Larkin.

“We do believe in the cable companies … we think it’s a value worth leaning in a little bit harder for,” he said, suggesting Charter has the financial ability to complete the project.

“So, the short answer is ‘no’ — the $720,000 would not be available?” Newman pressed.

“No,” Larkin answered.

The wireless industry’s largest lobbying group, CTIA-The Wireless Association, filed suit in a Utah federal court Wednesday to stop the state from imposing a 36 cent surcharge wireless carriers like AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless cannot easily pass on to their customers.

The new fee, retroactively charged from the beginning of 2018, applies to all telephone lines other than prepaid wireless phones, and represents the chief funding mechanism for Utah’s Universal Public Telecommunications Service Support Fund, which supports providing service in high cost rural areas of Utah and the expenses attributed to Utah’s participation in the federal Telephone Lifeline program, which provides subsidized telephone service to the poor.

The CTIA is upset because its member companies will have to assess the surcharge on almost every customer with a landline or wireless postpaid phone in the state, including customers getting free wireless service through the federal Lifeline program. The CTIA argues that puts an unfair burden on companies, especially those asked to either eat the cost of the surcharge or attempt to collect 36¢ a month from Lifeline customers that currently do not receive bills from their providers.

The lobbying group called its options “a Hobson’s choice” between two bad ideas. Because wireless carriers don’t want to absorb the surcharge and pay for it out of current revenue, the alternatives are to either pass along the cost to customers or raise rates. CTIA’s complaint predominately focuses on what it calls the “absurd real world results” of wireless companies struggling to get paid back the 36¢ monthly surcharge:

Participants in these [Lifeline] programs are frequently members of “unbanked” communities, and even a monthly rate of $0.36 may prove an insurmountable obstacle to participation in the Lifeline program. Those without bank accounts or a credit card have no effective means to remit a surcharge of $0.36. If they choose to mail cash, they would have to spend more on postage than on the surcharge itself. Or they may need to purchase a money order, if such are available in increments of $0.36, and pay both the charges applicable to obtaining a money order and the cost of postage – all well in excess of the $0.36 due under the PSC Rule.

[…] The PSC Rule has a chilling effect on the introduction of service offers in the market today. Carriers that have an interest in introducing innovative service plans that have or are likely to have intrastate revenues near, at, or below $0.36 will have to determine whether to select a collection method illegally imposed on them under the PSC Rule or to not offer such service plans at all.

[…] Further, requiring the underlying wireless carrier to pay the required $0.36 per month UUSF surcharge in such third-party retail prepaid situations would not cure this discrimination, as the wireless carrier generally has no billing relationship with the end-user customer, and therefore no ability to pass the charge through to the end-user customer. Requiring wireless carriers to remit the UUSF surcharge in those situations, notwithstanding their inability to pass the surcharge through to the end-user customer, is equally discriminatory vis-à-vis service providers who can pass through the UUSF surcharge to customers.

The CTIA doesn’t dwell on the real world impact of its member companies, with revenues well into the billions of dollars, simply absorbing the 36¢ a month charged to their Utah customers as a cost of doing business. Instead, the lawsuit argues Utah cannot apply USF surcharges in a way that is “inconsistent with the requirements related to the federal universal service Lifeline program.”

CTIA argues the surcharge, when applied to Lifeline customers, unfairly increases rates for the most-needy. But the lobbying group was equally concerned the charges would not apply to competing prepaid wireless providers, because the Utah Public Service Commission lacks statutory authority to impose surcharges on those providers. The CTIA argues the surcharge is discriminatory and not competitively neutral, because the it allows third-party retailers of prepaid wireless telecommunications services like Tracfone to avoid the surcharge.

The CTIA is seeking a permanent injunction to stop the surcharges and has asked the court to order the defendants — essentially Utah’s taxpayers — to pay its court costs.

To promote its gigabit speed offering, Verizon Communications has introduced a new offer targeting online gamers that offers a free, one-year subscription to Xbox Live Gold and a choice of Sea of Thieves or Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds for free when signing up for Verizon FiOS Gigabit Connection (940/880 Mbps) service at a special promotional price of $79.99 for one year.If you are an online gamer, try this out or the League of Legends betting.

Extremely high-speed internet service is often not as important for online gamers as latency, but Verizon is clearly targeting game-loving millennials with this standalone internet-only offer. It is also avoiding some of the usual hurdles that can drive some away, especially by waiving the budget-straining $99.99 setup fee. But some of Verizon’s usual fine print and gotchas still apply:

• Offer valid for new residential internet customers only.
• Customers must sign up for this promotion online.
• Customers are billed at the non-promotional, regular price and receive bill credits on their bill to cut the cost to $79.99. After one year, those bill credits end and you pay the regular price.
• A $10/mo router charge applies, along with unspecified “other fees, taxes, and equipment charges.”
• Customers must agree to paperless billing and autopay with a ACH debit to a checking account or bank debit card only.
• Credit approval is required. Those who don’t pass muster may require a refundable deposit.

Other important terms:

• Must maintain your Verizon FiOS Gigabit Connection service for at least 60 days after installation, with no past-due balance, or promotion will be canceled.
• You must redeem your Xbox Live and chosen game codes within 90 days of delivery or they may expire and will not be replaced.
• The offer is valid from April 5 to May 4, 2018.

Once your service is installed, you will need to wait for your first Verizon bill. Within 24 hours after Verizon receives full payment of your first FiOS bill, you will receive an e-mail with a code for a one-year membership to Xbox Live Gold and a second code for a digital download of the game you chose during your order. This email will include a link to the Microsoft Live website where you can follow the required steps to activate your membership and download your game.

If you already have an Xbox Live Gold membership, the supplied code will extend your current membership by an additional 12 months. It must be redeemed by December 31, 2018. If you already own the game you chose during your FiOS order, you will not be able to redeem the game code through your Xbox Live account or exchange it for an equivalent cash value. However, you can gift  the code to a friend or family member. But be sure to have them activate it within 90 days. If you’re in search for other games that may tickle your fancy, a site like asn168jempol.com may interest you.

AT&T and Crown Castle, which owns many of the cell towers that AT&T and other wireless carriers use, have signed a new agreement allowing AT&T to lease space on existing Crown Castle towers to deploy 5G wireless infrastructure.

The key to the new agreement is streamlining the process of contracting for long-term space for small cells and other infrastructure that will be critical for 5G wireless deployments. AT&T also wants to more rapidly execute contracts to deploy wireless network upgrades to fulfill its obligations for FirstNet, the first responders emergency communications network.

“This agreement marks a significant milestone in our relationship with Crown Castle,” said Susan Johnson, executive vice president of global connections and supply chain. “It establishes a market-based framework and simplifies the lease management and administration process. This will allow us to streamline network projects to better serve our customers.”

The new agreement also covers traditional cell tower infrastructure for 4G LTE services. It will include provisions for long-term leasing, which will give AT&T additional stability in planning and service.

Crown Castle owns, operates and leases more than 40,000 cell towers and approximately 60,000 route miles of fiber supporting small cells and fiber solutions across every major U.S. market.