FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, Better Broadband Mapping - Two More Reverse Auctions [telecom]

In a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) released on July 11,

2019 (scheduled to be adopted at the FCC's August 1, 2019 Open Meeting), the FCC proposes to make $20.4 billion available under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) through two multi-round, descending clock auctions, largely following the bidding rules of the CAF II auction that was conducted in 2018.

Under the draft NPRM, Phase I of the RDOF would allocate support to wholly unserved census blocks not having broadband speeds at or above the 25/3 Mbps fixed broadband benchmark with a budget of at least $16 billion over ten years. Many of these wholly unserved census blocks were included in the state-wide offers the FCC extended to the price cap ILECs in 2015. The performance obligation in the statewide offers was set at the very low bar of 10/1 Mbps. The funding under these offers expires in 2021.