According to the FCC’s latest Broadband progress report, nearly one in three rural Americans lack access to broadband as compared to only one in 100 urban Americans. It was recently announced that ten telecommunications carriers have accepted $1.5 billion in annual support from the Connect America Fund www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/connecting-america. The funding is to be used to expand and support broadband for nearly 7.3 million rural consumers in 45 states and one territory.
The Connect America Fund provides further private investment to carriers to develop rural networks. The Connect America Fund sparks private investment through subsidies to reduce the prohibitively high cost of deploying networks in remote rural areas, with the balance of the investment borne by the carrier.
According to Carol Mattey Deputy Chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, “The companies didn’t accept the entire offer, although most accepted most if not all of their offer. Like other investments, this was a business decision each company had to make and as expected, some of the companies declined the offer of support in certain states.”
“However, that doesn’t mean that the residents in those communities will be left behind. We’re getting ready to unleash the power of market competition to provide broadband in those communities.”
She adds, “Our Rural Broadband Experiments program demonstrates that competitive auctions can draw interest from a variety of providers willing to provide faster broadband at lower cost, and now we are eager to implement competitive bidding on a larger scale across the country.”
Go to http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0827/DOC-335082A1.pdf for more details on the ten telecommunications carriers that accepted support for rural broadband deployment from the Connect America Fund.