Rural Broadband: Go Big and Stay Home

Cable operators are telling the Federal Communications Commission that if it wants to attract cable operators and other terrestrial broadband providers to its massive subsidy program for rural broadband buildouts, it should retain census blocks as the smallest biddable unit in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auction. NCTA–The Internet & Television Association has suggested that if the FCC goes big, cable operator bidders may stay home. The reason is that if the FCC changed to larger, census-tract blocks, cable operators might not bid because many will be expanding their current networks and it would not be economical in some cases to have to build out huge tracts of land as it were.