Alerts

BillMax BDC Report Generation – Sept 2022

The FCC BDC and FCC 477 are both due on September 1. The steps remain the same for the FCC 477 and these are the steps to generate the BDC report data.

1. Upgrade to BillMax 2022 Q3. The RPM is available in the customer portal from our website. Click login and look for the menu option Files to locate.
2. Upload fabric data received from Costquest from Reports->FCC Broadband Data Collection.
3. Upload coverage shapefile(s) from System Administration->Access Points.
4. Validate the data from Reports->FCC Broadband Data Collection.
5. Generate the BDC report data.

New Broadband Data Collection Report – June 2022

This notice only applies to Service Providers who conduct business in the United States.

Overview

Hopefully you are aware of a new report requirement from the FCC. This report requirement originates from the FCC’s Broadband Data Collection initiative. It is essentially a new and improved version of the FCC 477 Report where the broadband availability is reported either by serviceable addresses (the so-called Data Fabric) or by polygons (shapefile) instead of at the less granular census block level. An overview from the FCC can be found at https://www.fcc.gov/BroadbandData.

The purpose of this notice is to provide general guidance and information on how BillMax plans to support BDC reporting requirement. In most cases this new report will require more of your resources to complete. We urge you to study the requirement and make plans now. The FCC 477 Report, until further notice, is still required as well. Both reports are due September 1 for the January 1 – June 30 filling period.

There is quite a lot of information needed to plan, prepare and file, so again we urge you to read the documents, watch the tutorials, etc. at the FCC website. You may also reach out to us at support@billmax.com. We can answer process and BillMax software related questions. If you have questions about the specification, rules, challenge process, etc. please email broadbanddatainquiries@fcc.gov.

Read More

Changes to the FCC 477 Report – January 2021

The FCC has recently announced that the FCC 477 reports going forward (2022 and beyond) must now use the 2020 Census when reporting Census tracts and blocks for subscribers and deployment locations.

To support this requirement, BillMax is providing two alternatives to its clients. Option 1) Upgrade to a release greater than or equal to BillMax 2022.8895. Option 2) Patch your system to use the 2020 Census. Before implementing Census 2020 in BillMax, you must make sure that all filings prior to 2022 have been made and have been accepted by the  FCC. Please read these instructions completely before proceeding. If there are any questions about the process, please contact us at suppport@billmax.com.

For option 1, see instructions for upgrading at https://www.billmax.com/billmax/webhelp/#UpgradeBillMax.html. Please note, depending on the level of local customizations, upgrading may require careful planning and review before proceeding. The latest release is available via the ‘Files’ link in your customer portal at https://www.billmax.com/portal.

For option 2, download and install the latlong2census.pl and census.php files. These files are available via the ‘Files’ link in your customer portal at https://www.billmax.com/portal. The census.php script must be copied to /usr/local/billmax/html/census.php and the ownership/permissions must be “-rw-r—– 1 billmax billmax”. The latlong2census.pl script should be copied to /usr/local/billmax/src/scripts/latlong2census.pl and its ownership/permissions must be “-rwx—— 1 billmax billmax”. Lastly, you must configure BillMax to use the census.php file for the census lookups. To do this, edit the /usr/local/billmax/local/billmax.conf file. Add or set, as needed: BX_CENSUSURL=“https://127.0.0.1/census.php”

Regardless of which option above is used, the existing census information in BillMax must be replaced with the appropriate new census data. To do this you must run: /usr/local/billmax/src/scripts/latlong2census.pl -table <table name> -force for all tables that contain census data where <table> is ‘user’ and either ‘pop’ or ‘location’ tables. The ‘pop’ table is used in recent versions in BillMax. For older versions, the ‘location’ table is used instead.

Once these steps are complete and successful, the FCC 477 report can be run. It is important, that in this report cycle that you regenerate the coverages and merge the deployment as described on the FCC 477 report page.

Geocoding – September 2020