Comments close Sept. 30 on FCC review of rural health care internet subsidy

Anyone who wants to tell the Federal Communications Commission what it should do with the subsidy that pays for internet service at rural Alaska health clinics has until Wednesday. The FCC released a draft notice reviewing the program's rate rules on July 16, 2026, adopted it Aug. 6 and published it in the Federal Register on Aug. 31. Comments are due Sept. 30 and reply comments Oct. 30, in docket WC 17-310.

The Rural Health Care Program subsidizes telecommunications and broadband service for rural health facilities: it lowers the cost providers pay for connectivity in places where service is otherwise expensive to deliver. The Justice Department has put the program at more than $570 million a year.

The notice asks whether the cost-study method used to set rural rates should be replaced, whether the program should adopt a list of eligible services, and whether performance metrics should speed up the processing of funding requests. An accompanying order lets providers reuse previously approved rural rates for funding year 2027 instead of filing fresh cost justifications.

GCI Communication Corp. of Anchorage draws heavily on the program. Federal spending records list more than 600 Rural Health Care entries for the company worth over $1 billion, a figure that includes downward adjustments as well as payments.

In May 2023, the Justice Department announced that GCI agreed to pay $40,242,546 to resolve allegations it knowingly violated competitive bidding requirements and submitted inflated claims between 2013 and 2020. The department said the claims were allegations only and that there had been no determination of liability. A former GCI executive who brought the case received $6.4 million. GCI said the settlement reflected the FCC's updated rate guidance applied retroactively "to the years 2010 through 2016," rather than an admission of wrongdoing.