GigFire, Formerly LTD Broadband, Makes Illinois Acquisition

Fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) provider GigFire has acquired Rural Comm, a service provider headquartered in Farina (IL). GigFire, which now operates in ten Midwestern states, was known as LTD Broadband until earlier in 2023. The company says that it will serve more than 150 communities in Illinois and upgrade them to provide gigabit speeds. Rural Comm offers fixed wireless using 60 GHz technology and fiber broadband. The company – then operating as LTD Broadband — was a top ten winner in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction with winning bids totaling over  $1.3 million. However, the Federal Communications Commission found that the company's long form application did not demonstrate that it could deliver on what it promised and rejected it in August 2022. The rejection of LTD’s bid had been expected. Less than a month earlier the FCC proposed fines totaling $4.3 million against 73 companies for defaulted RDOF bids. More than half of the fines were aimed at LTD. The proposed fine against LTD Broadband involved 768 census block groups centered in Kansas and Oklahoma. LTD’s history is as a fixed wireless access (FWA) provider, though its RDOF initiative would have required the company to deploy fiber broadband.