telecompetitor

One of the most interesting aspects of the recently-completed Connect America Fund (CAF) II auction is the strong showing by smaller, non-traditional service providers. The second biggest winner, for example, was Wisper — a company little known outside southern Illinois and parts of neighboring states, where the company offers fixed wireless broadband, primarily in rural areas, including some areas the company has served for more than a decade.

The Federal Communications Commission will vote later in Oct on rule changes for the upcoming auction of spectrum in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band. According to a draft order released Oct 2, the proposed CBRS auction rules call for licenses to be awarded by county for a period of 10 years with the option to renew. The FCC is proposing lengthening license terms in the CBRS (3.5 GHz) band, "modestly" increasing the size of those geographic licenses--the plan is to auction the licenses sometime in 2019-and allowing them to be renewed.

Four telecommunication groups have come together to urge the Federal Communications Commission to increase the Universal Service Fund (USF) budget to at least $2.4 billion for 2018 for the high-cost portion of the program. The request took the form of a letter from ITTA – The Voice of America’s Broadband Providers, USTelecom – The Broadband Association, NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association and WTA – Advocates for Rural Broadband.

Verizon fixed 5G service officially launched Oct 1 in Houston (TX), Indianapolis (IN), Los Angeles (CA), and Sacramento (CA). The new residential broadband option could open up a new era in broadband competition. Or not. Built on Verizon’s own TF network standard, the fixed 5G service is gigabit capable and starts with an uncapped 300 Mbps tier for $70 per month to non-Verizon wireless customers and a discounted $50 per month to current Verizon wireless customers with a qualifying smartphone plan.

With the Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II auction completed, the Federal Communications Commission’s next CAF responsibility will be to establish plans for the CAF remote area auction, which aims to help bring broadband to remote areas not currently addressed through the CAF program. And FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly is questioning whether there is sufficient funding for that auction. He said at the Sept 26 FCC meeting that the CAF II auction results suggest that $5-7 billion dollars would be needed to bring broadband to locations that will remain unserved after the CAF II auction.

Just over 100 Connect America Fund II auction winners are getting set to deploy broadband service to unserved rural areas for which they won funding. Today we take a deeper dive into the auction results and consider the long-term impact that the CAF II winners may have on the communities that they’re moving into.

The proposed Universal Service contribution factor will exceed 20%. It will be 20.1% for the fourth quarter of 2018, according to a new Federal Communications Commission public notice. An FCC spokesperson confirmed that it is the highest ever. And it means that just over one-fifth of every dollar that users spend on interstate and international telecom services (essentially long-distance voice services) will go toward the Universal Service Fund (USF) program. The USF contribution factor has been creeping up for years. Back in 2012, the contribution factor had reached a then-whopping 17.4%.