RDOF NPRM Will Seek Additional Info, After FCC Meeting
FCC commissioners voted Thursday to release for comment an NPRM for a $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks dissented in part, but all the commissioners and Chairman Ajit Pai said the new USF subsidies would play a big role in helping close the digital divide. The pushback from the two Democrats was expected (see 1907300072).
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Under the plan the RDOF will award money to providers that serve rural customers with broadband speeds of at least 25 Mbps downstream, 3 up, but will favor higher speeds. The money will be allotted through reverse auctions in two phases. The first would give up to $16 billion in high-cost rural areas still unserved by high-speed broadband. The rest, along with any not allotted during the first phase, would go to underserved areas.
Rosenworcel dissented in part on the NPRM because she believes it's premature to spend so much money before the unserved and underserved areas have been properly identified through new mapping data collection techniques (see 1908010007). "We need maps before money; we need data before deployment," she said. Starks agreed and suggested the FCC do a smaller initial auction and commit funding for a shorter period of time until better data is collected through new broadband maps.
Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said he has long been a proponent of reverse auctions and was pleased to support the RDOF NPRM. He said he's a strong advocate of a technology neutral broadband plan. "We simply can't afford to ignore satellite," he said. New language in the NPRM will also seek comment on whether wireless broadband service should be included in the RDOF program. "It must be part of the discussion," he told us during a news conference after the meeting.
Commissioner Brendan Carr said his colleagues agreed to seek comment on new ideas for the program through the NPRM, including whether wireless should be considered part of the mix. Asked whether he had concerns that some mobile wireless plans may not be robust enough for certain applications, like homework assignments, Carr said he hasn't finalized a position but is eager to see what the record will show. Pai dismissed the idea of waiting or going slow in deploying funding to help spur broadband growth, comparing it to not providing medicine for an illness until everyone in an outbreak had been identified.
Rosenworcel supports a push for rural broadband infrastructure along the scale of the push to provide electricity in rural areas in the 1930s. "You know where it started? They started with maps." Starting the first phase of the RDOF auction without new mapping data "is a fundamental flaw in what we have here," she said during a news conference after the meeting.
“The investment being made here is massive, and the FCC properly recognizes the many technological paths that can be taken to get rural Americans online,” said Claude Aiken, president of the Wireless ISP Association. The RDOF incorporates elements from the Connect America Fund II auction, in which 15 WISPs were successful bidders, the group said: “Until CAF II, WISPs had been excluded from accessing subsidies because they were not traditional telephone companies.”