Rural Broadband Experiments Are 'Historic Occasion'
Last week’s opening of the filing period for the FCC’s rural broadband experiments “marks a historic occasion,” Wireline Deputy Chief Carol Mattey said in a blog post Wednesday. The commission for the first time is using a competitive bidding process…
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to award about $100 million in Connect America Fund support for broadband in rural America. Even before the Nov. 7 end of the application period, the bureau has “learned a lot from these experiments,” in doing outreach to potential bidders, creating the application form and “getting the online system up and running,” she wrote. In the future, “we’ll be learning about competitive interest to build networks to rural communities that will deliver services that far exceed the Commission’s current performance standards,” she wrote. “And I’m sure we will learn something unexpected that will help the Commission make decisions regarding the design of the Phase II auction that will occur after the offer of model-based support to price cap carriers.”