Broadband Associations Ask FCC for Defaulted RDOF Census Block Transparency

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association, NRTC, the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association and the Ensuring RDOF Integrity Coalition (ERIC) have asked the Federal Communications Commission to release a list of census block groups that provisionally won funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program but on which the winning bidder has defaulted. The associations say this move will help enable other providers to gain other sources of funding to cover some of the costs of serving the defaulted RDOF census block groups. The letter urges the FCC to issue a public notice that identifies by winning bidder those census block groups that were bid for and provisionally won in the auction but have since been definitively defaulted on by the winning bidder. Defaults or apparent defaults should be listed whether the default occurred due to failure to timely submit necessary information or waiver requests by the long-form application deadlines, or by notification of the intent to default provided to the commission by winning bidders.