As states get closer to accepting applications for $42.5 billion in BEAD rural broadband funding, more defaults in the previous RDOF rural broadband funding program could be coming, notes Telecompetitor.
The potential defaults involve network operators that had winning bids in the RDOF program in 2020, but who have not yet started the deployments for which they won funding. The FCC administered the RDOF program, but didn’t authorize funding for some winning bidders until 18 months or so after the auction was completed. By that time, deployment costs had risen substantially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, some RDOF winners say they can’t do the deployments for which they won funding unless the FCC makes additional money available to them. It appears unlikely the Commission would do that, but it has said it would consider relaxing default penalties for RDOF winners that can’t afford to build.
Seventy stakeholders filed a letter with the FCC urging the Commission to waive or reduce RDOF and CAF II default penalties for a short time for those winners who have found themselves in limbo. Gigi Sohn, now executive director of the American Association for Public Broadband, told Telecompetitor “the vast majority of signatories are in areas that would be impacted.”
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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