Mediacom to meet replacement deadline

Cyber ​​Security

A major ISP hopes to meet a July 15 deadline to remove telecommunications equipment connected to China.

WASHINGTON, July 5, 2024 – A major cable broadband company plans to meet a deadline later this month to complete the removal of telecommunications equipment contaminated by China from its network.

In a file published FridayMediacom Communications has informed the Federal Communications Commission that there are only days left before work to remove equipment supplied by Huawei Technologies Co. or ZTE Corp. is complete.

“Mediacom has planned and scheduled its final shipment of Covered Equipment for pickup and disposal on July 8, 2024. Mediacom is confident that it will have fully completed all removal, replacement and disposal tasks by its program deadline of July 15, 2024,” the company said.

New York-based Mediacom is the fifth-largest cable operator in the United States, providing gigabit broadband services to 1.3 million homes and businesses in 22 states, primarily in the Midwest and Southeast.

In 2019, Congress passed the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, which provided the FCC with $1.9 billion to fund the equipment replacement program, known as the Rip and Replace program.

Congress has taken action to address a national security threat posed by two major China-based technology companies.

Mediacom said it asked for $86 million but received only $38 million in the Rip and Replace financing.

Citing supply chain delays and a lack of full funding, Mediacom told the FCC it would not be able to meet the original April 15 deadline and requested a three-month extension to July 15. The FCC granted overtime.

“Mediacom experienced hardware delivery delays that significantly impacted Mediacom’s original timeline for completing the removal, replacement and disposal of its installed Huawei equipment,” Mediacom said. “Clearly, the equipment could not be removed, services activated, subscribers migrated and covered equipment disposed of until replacement equipment was available.”

After implementing the Rip and Replace program, the agency was inundated with funding requests totaling $5.6 billion, forcing it to ration its funding.

July 1st report The FCC told Congress that 14 of the 122 Rip and Replace recipients have certified that they have completed their removal commitments. Six months ago, the FCC said only five applicants had completed the required work.

The FCC report says that nearly 40 percent of recipients said they could not complete the replacement work without full funding, more than double the number who said so when the FCC filed its report. his last report in January.

The FCC has granted 70 deadline extensions, at least in part because of lack of money, compared with just 11 in January.

Extension requests continue to arrive at the FCC, with Florida broadband provider Hotwire Communications ask the agency on July 1, to push back its deadline by an additional six months, until February 2025.

The agency has so far approved 23,830 claims totaling nearly $700 million. Claimants have received 39.5 percent of the approved cost of their claims due to the funding gap.