Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

Nextlink, one of the biggest winners in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, will be using 10 Gbps XGS-PON fiber broadband infrastructure from Nokia to connect 200,000 homes in 12 states; including 6 states that it already serves and 6 new states. XGS-PON fiber technology can be easily upgraded to 25 Gbps in the future.

Tarana is expected to supply gigabit fixed wireless for at least one or two of the biggest winning Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) bidders; one of which is Nextlink. Tarana's new hardware will be able to use spectrum in the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, as well as new software that supports what the company calls G1x2 mode. That mode enables the new hardware or the previous version of the hardware to use up to 160 MHz of spectrum. The previous version of Tarana’s offering worked only in the 5 GHz band and could use only 80 MHz of spectrum.

In August 2022, the Federal Communications Commission denied the SpaceX (Starlink) bid to receive $885 million over ten years through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). The FCC went on to say in the order that there were several technical reasons for the Starlink rejection. Starlink appealed the FCC ruling. Current federal grant rules don’t allow federal subsidies to be given to any area that is slated to get another federal broadband subsidy. This has meant that the RDOF areas have been off-limits to other federal grants since the end of 2020.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB), in conjunction with the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force (RBATF) and the Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA), authorizes Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support for 49 winning bids including Cyber Broadband in Alabama and E Fiber San Juan in Utah.

The Federal Communications Commission estimates it will take between $397 billion and $478 billion to reach all underserved locations. It’s worth remembering there are only two numbers at play: the number of locations that don’t have access to 100/20 broadband service, and the average cost to bring fiber-to-the-home service to those locations. I estimated 23.1 million un- and underserved locations. The FCC study estimated 45.5 million, or 32% of all United States housing units. The second part of the equation is the cost to serve the average unserved or underserved location.

With US cable broadband subscriber growth remaining flat or going negative, operators are hard-pressed to find a remedy that will rekindle growth in a service category now considered central to the overall business.

Starlink asked the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider a decision to deny it $885.5 million in rural broadband funding.

One can assess the population that is unserved by broadband, the residential housing units unserved by broadband, or with the new Federal Communication Commission maps, “broadband serviceable locations.” My analyses are based on census block-level housing unit projections for 2019 (based on the 2010 Census), published by the FCC.

Given the excess of $11 billion that the Federal Communications Commission currently has in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), interested parties--particularly major broadband providers--have inquired whether the FCC will offer another round of award funding. However, for this to be feasible, the FCC would have to engage in a lot of internal review and restructuring of its reverse auction mechanism if it seeks to revitalize the RDOF.

Spectrum announced the launch of Spectrum Internet, Mobile, TV and Voice services to more than 2,670 homes and small businesses in rural Jefferson County (TX). Spectrum’s newly constructed fiber-optic network buildout is part of the company’s approximately $5 billion investment in unserved rural communities, which includes $1.2 billion won in the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction.