FCC Tweaks Alaska Connect Fund

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 2025 – The Federal Communications Commission made some tweaks Friday to its plan for expanding mobile coverage in Alaska. The agency affirmed that it expects 5G upgrades in some areas that lack any homes and businesses, an effort to ensure meaningful mobile coverage, and eliminated some compliance requirements.

The agency adopted rules last year for its Alaska Connect Fund, which serves as a successor to the $1.5 billion Alaska Plan established in 2016. For mobile providers, ACF support will start in 2027 and last through 2034.

Alaska-based provider GCI had asked earlier this year for some changes to the ACF, including to limit the speed goal of 35 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 5 Mbps upload to areas with broadband serviceable locations (BSLs).

The FCC declined to do so on procedural grounds, saying the company should have brought the concerns sooner, but added that it would have sided against GCI anyway.

“Many areas where Americans work and travel do not have BSLs,” the agency wrote in its order. “If we limited mobile providers’ service commitments to [areas] with BSLs, then valuable areas where Americans work and travel – such as roads – may not see any service improvements by the end of 2034.”

Still providers don’t have to build out or upgrade areas where it would be “technically and financially infeasible” to do so, a standard the FCC sought to clarify. The agency said that, while important for public safety, voice-only areas at the edge of a provider’s coverage area don’t have to be upgraded by default.

“We generally expect a provider to extend 5G-NR at 35 * 3 Mbps to all portions of its service areas within a 1.5-mile radius of its cell sites unless it can otherwise demonstrate that doing so is technically and financially infeasible,” the order read. “This expectation is only

applicable where the provider has access to fiber or microwave backhaul and to competitive transport pricing rates.”

The order added that “Mobile providers will be able to demonstrate to [the agency] other reasons why it is not technically and financially feasible to meet these expectations during performance plan discussions, and may propose alternatives.”

Those performance plans have to be submitted to the FCC by Sept. 1, 2026. The FCC also eliminated a yearly filing requirement for ACF, another GCI request, and altered some filing deadlines. 

“These actions will improve and further stabilize the FCC’s long-standing commitment to supporting connectivity for Alaskans,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement.

GCI was spun off by Liberty Broadband this year, as the latter is being acquired by cable giant Charter. GCI had 154,500 broadband subscribers and 207,000 wireless lines at the end of the second quarter of 2025.

Rural mobile providers in the continental U.S. have also been facing challenges lately. They  and their trade groups have been pushing the agency for an ongoing support mechanism for their operational expenses.

The rural telcos have said roaming revenues have declined and larger carriers have built out to the population centers that used to subsidize their most remote towers, leaving them losing money each month while providing critical services in rural areas. Legacy opex support exists for mobile providers but it’s decreased over the years and is set to be phased out.