Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Winners Seek Solutions to Rising Build Costs

Deployment cost estimates underlying winning Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) bids are no longer accurate, representatives for a coalition of RDOF winners told FCC officials on July 14. The representatives suggested several possible remedies, including providing additional funding and other ideas. In a letter summarizing the meeting, the coalition cited “massive and unprecedented increases in broadband deployment construction costs . . . that could never have been anticipated at the time RDOF winners placed reverse bids during the RDOF auction.” The RDOF auction was designed to cover some of the costs of deployments to unserved areas. Funding for an area went to the company that committed to deploying service to the area at the lowest level of government support. Winning bidders were announced in late 2020, and costs have risen considerably since then, driven in part by pandemic-driven scarcities and by increased competition for materials and labor triggered, in part, by new government broadband funding programs. The Coalition of RDOF Winners recommended several possible options for addressing the funding shortfall, are not the only ones to have asked the FCC for help on this front. The coalition pressed for additional funding, apparently without specifying a potential funding source.