Joan Engebretson

The Federal Communications Commission issued a public notice stating that it is “ready to authorize” $140 million in rural broadband funding for a portion of the entities that had winning bids in the Connect America Fund CAF II auction. The FCC is still reviewing required information submitted by auction winners and said other winners that meet all requirements to be deemed “ready to authorize” will be included in a future public notice.

The Federal Communications Commission will vote in Feb on proposed procedures for phasing out traditional Universal Service Fund (USF) support for areas served by price cap carriers in which the carrier did not accept funding through the Connect America Fund (CAF) to deploy broadband service. Those areas were subsequently made available for auction, with funding going to the network operator that offered to deploy broadband for the lowest level of support.

Next Century Cities, the American Action Forum, and Public Knowledge held a bipartisan discussion about tech policy priorities for the new Congress. 

Here are 10 questions about broadband we hope to find answers to in 2019:

There’s a lot more behind the news that the Federal Communications Commission plans to increase the minimum broadband speed target in rural areas that wasn’t detailed in FCC Chairman Pai’s recent blog post about current commission initiatives. The plan to increase the minimum broadband speed is just one aspect of a 125-page order that the FCC will consider next month. Also detailed in the order: a plan to make new offers of model-based A-CAM broadband support to rural rate-of-return (ROR) carriers.

Benton Ridge Telephone Company can trace its roots back over 100 years to when it started out as a rural telephone company serving the OH community with the same name. The largest part of the company’s business now, however, is its wireless internet service provider unit known as Watch Communications, which offers service in parts of rural OH, IN and IL. When the company decided to bid – and ultimately won over $52 million – in the Connect America Fund II auction, its plan was to use fixed wireless for the project area.

Secretary Sonny Perdue didn’t have many new details to share about the upcoming $600 million US Department of Agriculture rural broadband pilot when he addressed stakeholders at a USTelecom event. But his comments suggested that could change soon. “I’ve challenged my people to have a solid plan in place by the end of the year,” said Sec Perdue. He also noted that “we are close to determining the rules but we’re not there just yet.” He noted that USDA received more than 250 comments from stakeholders in response to the agency’s request for input on the pilot program.

The Competitive Carriers Association report “Assessment of the Economic Impact of The Airwaves Act" estimates that at least $1.5 billion could be raised for rural wireless in upcoming auctions of spectrum in the 24 GHz and 28 GHz bands, with additional funding to come from other auctions. The bill, sponsored by Sen Cory Gardner (R-CO), would require the Federal Communications Commission to complete auctions during each of the next three calendar years and to dedicate 10% of auction proceeds toward rural wireless. According to them, the issue is that the 28 GHz spectrum auction will not cove

Three of the nation’s four largest wireless carriers are poised to bid in the upcoming Federal Communications Commission auctions of millimeter wave spectrum, according to a new FCC public notice. Millimeter wave spectrum is expected to support 5G wireless services offering speeds as high as a gigabit per second or more. And although some people have argued that millimeter wave 5G is unlikely to be deployed in rural areas, several small rural carriers also are on the list of potential millimeter wave auction bidders released by the commission.

The average fixed wireless speed used in the US and Canada is 3.5 Mbps downstream, according to new research conducted by Preseem, a company that focuses on quality of experience monitoring and optimization for wireless internet service providers (WISPs). It’s important to note that 3.5 Mbps is not the average download speed offered by the WISPs, which is probably higher. Average fixed wireless speed was only slightly higher at peak times than it was overall, according to Preseem.