On March 7, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission issued a Public Notice announcing that the Form 477 filing interface has been reopened and the new deadline to submit the form this year is Friday, March 24, 2017. The FCC Form 477 report is typically due on March 1st annually, but as we noted in a prior advisory, the FCC temporarily suspended the filing deadline due to “technical difficulties in the filing interface.”
The Public Notice clarified that “[f]ilers who submitted their Form 477 filings prior to the closing of the site on Feb. 22, 2017 do not need to take any further action; those filings remain in ‘Submitted’ status. In addition, filers who started the filing process prior to the closing of the site do not need to re-upload any files or re-enter any records provided previously and should see those data after logging in to the interface.”
As a reminder, the Form 477 report requires the submission of information regarding broadband connections in individual states as of December 31 of the previous calendar year. The following entities are required to submit the report on an annual basis:
(1) Entities that are facilities-based providers of broadband (i.e., faster than 200 kbps, in at least one direction) connections (including both wired lines and wireless channels) to one or more end user locations in a state;
(2) ILECs or CLECs that provide wired or fixed wireless local exchange service to one or more end user customers;
(3) Providers of interconnected VoIP services that provide interconnected VoIP service to one or more subscribers in a state; and
(4) Facilities-based providers of mobile telephony services that serve one or more mobile telephony subscribers.
Filing Process: The Form 477 Report must be submitted via an FCC web-based interface and filers will need to use their Federal Registration Number (“FRN”) and associated password to access the system.
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