Rural Digital Opportunity Fund reporting obligations, compliance, and recordkeeping

(b) Recipients of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund support shall be subject to the compliance measures, recordkeeping requirements and audit requirements set forth in § 54.320(a)-(c).

(c) Recipients of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund support shall be subject to the non-compliance measures set forth in § 54.320(d) subject to the following modifications related to the recovery of support.

(1) If the support recipient does not report it has come into full compliance after the grace period for its sixth year or eighth year service milestone as applicable or if USAC determines in the course of a compliance review that the eligible telecommunications carrier does not have sufficient evidence to demonstrate that it is offering service to all of the locations required by the sixth or eighth year service milestone as set forth in § 54.320(d)(3):

(ii) Eighth year service milestone. If a Rural Digital Opportunity Fund support recipient is required to serve more new locations than determined by the Connect America Cost Model, support will be recovered as follows after the eighth year service milestone grace period or if USAC later determines in the course of a compliance review that a support recipient does not have sufficient evidence to demonstrate that it was offering service to all of the locations required by the eighth year service milestone:

(A) If an ETC has deployed to 95 percent or more of its new location count, but less than 100 percent, USAC will recover an amount of support that is equal to the average amount of support per location received in the state for that ETC over the support term for the relevant number of locations;

(B) If an ETC has deployed to 90 percent or more of its new location count, but less than 95 percent, USAC will recover an amount of support that is equal to 1.25 times the average amount of support per location received in the state for that ETC over the support term for the relevant number of locations;

(C) If an ETC has deployed to 85 percent or more of its new location count, but less than 90 percent, USAC will recover an amount of support that is equal to 1.5 times the average amount of support per location received in the state for that ETC over the support term for the relevant number of locations, plus 5 percent of the support recipient's total Rural Digital Opportunity Fund support authorized over the 10-year support term for that state;

(D) If an ETC has deployed to less than 85 percent of its new location count, USAC will recover an amount of support that is equal to 1.75 times the average amount of support per location received in the state for that ETC over the support term for the relevant number of locations, plus 10 percent of the support recipient's total Rural Digital Opportunity Fund support authorized over the 10-year support term for that state.

(2) Any support recipient that believes it cannot meet the third-year service milestone must notify the Wireline Competition Bureau within 10 business days of the third-year service milestone deadline and provide information explaining this expected deficiency. If a support recipient has not made such a notification by March 1 following the third-year service milestone, and has deployed to fewer than 20 percent of the required number of locations by the end of the third year, the recipient will immediately be in default and subject to support recovery. The Tier 4 status six-month grace period as set forth in § 54.320(d)(iv) will not be applicable.

At 85 FR 13798, Mar. 10, 2020, § 54.806 was added. This section contains information collection and recordkeeping requirements and will not become effective until approval has been given by the Office of Management and Budget.