Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

Before spending an additional $100 billion of public money on rural broadband, avoiding the mistakes of the past decade would be a good place to start.

Lesson #1: The digital divide was not a consequence of rural economics; it has been the policy of the federal government. Broadband is not simply a speed at a point in time. Rather than focus on a short-term goal of attaining any particular speed, public funding is better spent on long-term infrastructure, best defined as assets with a life of at least thirty years.

The Biden administration’s broadband plan tracks many of the ideas contained in the $94 billion “Internet for all” infrastructure bill that congressional Democrats introduced. And that is not a good thing.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association, NRTC, the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association and the Ensuring RDOF Integrity Coalition (ERIC) have asked the Federal Communications Commission to release a list of census block groups that provisionally won funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program but on which the winning bidder has defaulted.

Do you know how much money your state is getting from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF)? We crunched the data to find out how much RDOF money each state will get to expand internet access to rural Americans, breaking it down to dollars per resident.

Despite years of effort and tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, the United States still faces a stubborn rural-urban broadband gap. A large, one-time injection of federal capital can succeed in bridging the rural broadband divide if it is reasonably targeted and allocated through a reverse-auction program that serves as a transition away from the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund. The current FCC program is funded through regressive fees levied on a shrinking base of telecommunications services.

Two state associations representing broadband providers have asked the Federal Communications Commission to deny the long-form application filed by LTD Broadband in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program. LTD Broadband had the largest amount of RDOF winning bids in the program and stands to gain $1.3 billion for broadband deployments in 15 states if its long-form application is approved.

Representatives from broadband provider Nextlink met with Federal Communications Commission officials in response to a range of criticism the company has received regarding its provisional win in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction. The company was one of the biggest winners in the auction and will receive $429 million for rural broadband buildouts in seven states if the FCC approves its long-form RDOF application. Nextlink has come under fire from critics who argue that the company plans to use unproven fixed wireless technology to provide gigabit speeds.

On March 2, 2021, Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked Federal Communications Commission Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel for a detailed status of funds report for all Universal Service Fund (USF) accounts, including but not limited to the Connect America Fund (CAF), Lifeline Program for Low-Income Consumers, E-Rate - Schools & Libraries Program, and the Rural Health Care Program.

A group of Senators recently sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking to raise the definition of broadband to 100/100 Mbps. This speed has been discussed for several years as the logical step forward from the current 25/3 Mbps speed set by the FCC in 2015. It’s clear to everyone in the industry that homes are using a lot more broadband than they did in 2015 – with the biggest change being simultaneous uses of multiple broadband streams in the typical home. The change in broadband definition would trigger the following:

The average Charter Communications broadband-only customer is now using 700 gigabytes of data per month, according to Christopher Winfrey, the cable operator’s CFO. Winfrey said the high level of wireline broadband usage is the No. 1 reason wireless companies won’t be able to pry broadband marketshare from cable with fixed wireless products. “The average wireless customers uses only 10 gigs a month,” Winfrey said. “The difference in utilization rates is significant.