Dozens of ISPs qualify to bid on FCC broadband subsidies, hundreds more in line

18 May 2018 by Steve Blum
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Almost three hundred companies could be bidding for broadband service subsidies when the Federal Communications Commission begins auctioning off unserved rural territory across the United States. The FCC received 277 applications from companies that want to participate in the Connect America Fund program’s reverse auction, which is scheduled for late July.

Only 47 are good to go, though. The other 230 companies – including Frontier Communications – didn’t fully complete their applications, in the eyes of the FCC. They’ll have until 5 June 2018 to fix whatever problems they have.

AT&T and Verizon are in. Expanding wireline broadband service doesn’t seem to be top of mind for AT&T, though. It joined the auction via its “New Cingular Wireless” subsidiary – its mobile arm, in other words. That’s consistent with AT&T often stated intention of replacing rural broadband networks with wireless service. Verizon, on the other hand, left the door open for both its mobile or wireline companies to take part.

Comcast is represented, sorta. It owns half of Midcontinent Communications, a regional cable company based in South Dakota which submitted a complete application for the auction. Given that Midcontinent serves mostly rural and small market communities, it probably has a genuine – and limited – interest in some of the available territories.

Only one unambiguously Californian Internet service provider is on the complete list, Geolinks, a Ventura County based wireless ISP.

The auction has a lot of moving pieces. The FCC published a maximum subsidy for every remaining eligible area – i.e. where broadband service at 10 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload speeds aren’t available. Companies will, presumably, bid each other down until the lowest price wins. But, they’ll also get extra points if they propose higher speeds or better quality of service metrics. Then, all the winning bids for all the areas have to be ranked – the FCC only has about $2 billion available, versus a total reserve price of $6 billion.

The odds of every unserved community making the cut are extremely low.