This notice only applies to Service Providers who conduct business in the United States.

Hopefully you are aware of a new report requirement from the FCC. This report requirement originates from the FCC’s Broadband Data Collection initiative. It is essentially a new and improved version of the FCC 477 Report where the broadband availability is reported either by serviceable addresses (the so-called Data Fabric) or by polygons (shapefile) instead of at the less granular census block level. An overview from the FCC can be found at https://www.fcc.gov/BroadbandData.

The purpose of this notice is to provide general guidance and information on how BillMax plans to support BDC reporting requirement. In most cases this new report will require more of your resources to complete. We urge you to study the requirement and make plans now. The FCC 477 Report, until further notice, is still required as well. Both reports are due September 1 for the January 1 – June 30 filling period.

There is quite a lot of information needed to plan, prepare and file, so again we urge you to read the documents, watch the tutorials, etc. at the FCC website. You may also reach out to us at support@billmax.com. We can answer process and BillMax software related questions. If you have questions about the specification, rules, challenge process, etc. please email broadbanddatainquiries@fcc.gov.

Here are some key take-aways that we’ve noted thus far:

1.     Both the FCC 477 and the new BDC reports are required.

2.     The FCC 477 and BDC reports are similar in nature and intent. The key differences being how the broadband availability (deployment) is reported and the technology codes used.

3.     In the BDC report, there are two separate ways to report the broadband availability. The availability can be reported either by specific “data fabric” location (more on this below) in CSV files or by polygons in Shapefiles.

4.     If the Shapefile method is used to file the BDC report, the radio frequency (RF) propagation model parameters (frequency, power, antennae height, etc) used to generate the polygons must also be supplied.

5.     In addition to a company officer, the BDC report must be certified by an engineer (whether licensed or not has not been determined by the FCC yet).

6.     Along with the BDC report, comes a number of new enforcement (penalties) actions and a “challenge process” where a competitor or ordinary citizen can dispute the claimed availability.

7.     There are new distance thresholds for reporting of DSL, cable and fiber availability.

The specific location data (mentioned in #3) is a dataset comprised of “serviceable” addresses throughout the USA. A detailed explanation of this dataset can be found at the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCmWMk_DSOg. The person on file with the FCC should have received an email from Costquest (the FCC designated vendor of the fabric data) in April that describes the process of obtaining this data for your service areas. If you did not receive this email, please immediately contact nbfsupport@costquest.com and obtain the fabric data.

BillMax is researching how it can assist your company in filing the BDC report. The details on our implementation are not finalized yet. The following describes our plans as they now stand. These are subject to change:

1.     Coverages will no longer be generated within BillMax. Instead, coverage data must be generated externally using whatever means deemed appropriate and then provided to BillMax as polygons on a per Access Point (PON etc) basis or at least as frequent as the unique technology and speed specification. These polygons will be associated with the FCC required metadata (speeds, technology code, etc.) from BillMax or this metadata may be provided with the polygons.

2.     BillMax will be modified to load the serviceable addresses and merge this data spatially to produce the needed CSV report files.

3.     The FCC 477 Report will remain as is with the exception of the source of the coverage polygons.

Regardless of the implementation, an upgrade of BillMax will be required. BillMax intends to provide this release (or a patch if possible), no later than the first week of August. Please prepare for these report filings by obtaining the location fabric data and coverages that identify your service availability. As always if you have any questions, please reach out to us at support@billmax.com or 817.446.7776.