Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

Great Plains Communications (GPC) has been awarded a total of $3.54M as one of the winning bids through the Nebraska Public Service Commission’s (PSC) 2024 Reverse Auction to expand broadband access to more than 1,100 households in unserved areas of Nebraska. GPC’s funding will assist in providing high-speed fiber broadband services to approximately 310 unserved households in rural areas of Columbus, Hebron, Kearney, Madison, Mead, Monroe, Nebraska City, Palmer, Seward and Superior, Nebraska.

Mediacom is proving that even though it's a cable and fiber provider, it's happy to use fixed wireless access (FWA), too. Mediacom will use Tarana’s next-generation fixed wireless access (ngFWA) broadband technology in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina—states where it’s won funding from the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). The operator’s required RDOF buildout target is 5,694 locations, said Thomas Larsen, Mediacom’s SVP of government and public relations.

Breezeline has begun to activate fiber internet in previously unserved areas of King William County, Virginia. The 132-mile fiber expansion will make fiber available to over 1,500 homes and businesses by August 2025. The initiative will enable homes and businesses in King William County to access Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) technology with Gigabit-speed internet for the very first time.

A group known as the "coalition of RDOF winners" has weighed in on whether the Federal Communications Commission should grant an amnesty period for providers to relinquish their locations awarded through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) in the interest of making those locations available for the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program instead.

As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers pleas for more lenient Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) fines, electric co-ops are saying it's time for defaulters to own up. Internet service providers (ISP) have been defaulting on RDOF grants for years and have been struck with sizeable penalties from the FCC as a result.

Altice USA was awarded Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (“RDOF”) funding to deploy 100/20 Mbps service to 18 census block groups (“CBGs”) in Louisiana. Now Altice notifies the Federal Communications Commission of its plans to surrender its awarded RDOF areas in Louisiana. Altice had begun connecting unserved locations in its RDOF areas.

Spectrum announced the launch of Spectrum Internet, Mobile, TV and Voice services to approximately 400 homes and small businesses throughout rural Walworth County, Wisconsin. Spectrum’s newly constructed fiber-optic network buildout includes parts of the city and town of Whitewater and the towns of LaGrange and Sugar Creek.

There’s a lot of talk about how the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) might make a mess of things with the Broadband Equity, Access & Deployment (BEAD) program. That’s because if a location is covered by an RDOF award, then it’s ineligible for a BEAD grant. Unfortunately, many RDOF awardees have officially defaulted on their obligations to build fiber, or they just haven’t made any progress in deploying the fiber.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) partially waived, on one's own behalf, the requirement that a bank issuing a letter of credit (LOC) to a support recipient for either the Connect America Fund Phase II Auction (Auction 903) or the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Auction (Auction 904) maintain a Weiss bank safety rating of B- or better.  This limited waiver only applies to banks that previously issued LOCs to Auction 903 or 904 support recipients, and therefore previously had a Weiss bank safety rating of B- or better.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) seeks comment on a letter from 69 Internet Service Providers, Trade Associations, State and Local Officials, School Districts, Unions, and Civil Society Organizations [including the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society].