AT&T is not on the list of 505 would-be rural broadband subsidy bidders released by the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday. It’s also not listed as a member of any of the 38 consortia – bidding groups – and none of the other 467 contenders are obviously AT&T subsidiaries. None of the FCC registration numbers directly held by AT&T match up to any of the listed bidders either.
It’s difficult to prove a negative, but so far it appears that absence of evidence is also evidence of absence. AT&T does not appear to be interested in going after the $16 billion in ten year operating subsidies that the FCC will be awarding in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund reverse auction next month.
The list is a bit of a tease. The FCC isn’t telling us which states these companies intend to bid in – California might or might not be in their dreams.
Other major California Internet service providers are also missing from the list, or have been tagged as having “incomplete” applications. Only one of California’s incumbent telcos filed complete paperwork the first time around. Consolidated Communications, which operates in a small area east of Sacramento, is ready to go. There were no other obviously Californian ISPs among the 121 organisations on the “complete” list.
Frontier is one of the 384 ISPs on the “incomplete” list, sailing under its bankruptcy-induced “debtor in possession” flag. So is Cox Communications, Altice (aka Suddenlink) and a couple of smaller cable operators, Horizon and Mediacom. But not Charter, despite signalling earlier this year that it would chase RDOF money, or Comcast, which comes as no surprise. Also in the incomplete category are Californian wireless Internet service providers and independent wireline ISPs.
The auction is scheduled to begin on 29 October 2020. Bidders that need to clean up their paperwork have until 6:00 p.m. eastern time on 23 September 2020 to do so. The FCC doesn’t seem likely to grant any extra time. At the same time that it published the lists, the FCC also published a sharply worded order denying five requests for extension of an earlier deadline. Pleas for waivers of eligibility or due diligence requirements usually get the same treatment.
The list will only get shorter as auction time nears.