RDOF areas are already 30% Served by broadband. That's a good thing.

At the time the Federal Communications Commission Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program winners were announced, $9.23 billion was committed over 10-years to cover over 5 million Unserved locations. According to the recently released FCC Funding Map, 3,458,796 of those locations have been authorized by the FCC for funding. Something surprising happens when we match the RDOF areas against the FCC’s Fabric of locations: 30 percent of the locations in RDOF areas, 1 million locations, are already Served according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) definition. In my previous estimates of the cost to reach all the Unserved and Underserved with fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband, I assumed all the RDOF areas were Unserved or Underserved. That isn’t the case, but this change only makes a marginal difference. Every state will have: 1) an Extremely High Cost Location threshold above which they don’t need to build fiber, 2) private capital matches that will provide at least 25% of the needed capital (and hopefully much more), 3) American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) projects that are funding broadband in some locations in some states, and 4) RDOF projects that still cover large numbers of locations in many states. In states with average costs to build fiber to their residents, there’s enough money.