Charter Shares Rural Broadband Take Rate Success

Charter President and CEO Chris Winfrey hopes to complete the company's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF)-funded rural broadband deployment ahead of time. Charter made broadband available to 200,000 new rural locations in 2022, according to Winfrey. The Charter rural take rate for “passings open at least six months” is “ahead of expectations at about 40%,” he said. Charter was one of the largest winners in the RDOF rural broadband program. Funding was awarded through a reverse auction, with funding for an area going to the company that committed to making service available to unserved locations for the lowest level of government support. Charter won over $1 billion in the auction. The company also won state and local broadband funding grants in 2022 and expects to win more in 2023. In December 2022, Charter said it had applications for state and local funding pending for 300,000 locations. Winfrey said Charter is likely to participate in the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program, but he added that the decision will hinge on program rules. “The rules still haven’t been clarified,” he said. “They need to be right for us to invest and we think they will.”