Joan Engebretson

Despite increased interest in fixed 5G on the part of the nation’s largest carriers, it’s still not a great choice for rural areas, said Jeff Kohler, co-founder of rural broadband wireless network operator Rise Broadband.

In discussing fixed 5G vs. broadband wireless, Kohler said he sees the relatively short range of 5G wireless as a disadvantage in rural areas. “On the 5G front, what we’re seeing is a lot of high-frequency millimeter wave technology,” said Kohler. As Kohler noted, millimeter wave spectrum is “great for high capacity and high speed over very short distances.” In contrast, the broadband wireless technology that Rise is using can cover distances of up to five miles from a tower, Kohler said. “Using millimeter wave you would probably have to split [the signal] five to seven times using small antennas and repeaters to reach three to five miles,” he commented.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has established what he is calling the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) aimed at bridging the digital divide and accelerating the deployment of high-speed broadband services. One of the BDAC’s first tasks will be to draft a model code for broadband deployment that will address topics such as local franchising, zoning, permitting and rights-of-way regulations with the goal of eliminating or reducing red tape that can complicate deployments. If this sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because several other entities already have undertaken aspects of this task. These entities include but are not necessarily limited to:
Google Fiber
CTC Technology & Energy
Gig.U
Pew Center on the States
Next Century Cities

Hopefully the BDAC will avoid re-inventing the wheel by reviewing these and other existing studies as part of the process of developing the model code. Also on tap for the BDAC will be addressing further reforms to the FCC’s pole attachment rules; identifying unreasonable regulatory barriers to broadband deployment and ways to encourage local governments to adopt deployment-friendly policies; and other reforms within the scope of the commission’s authority, according to a press release about the BDAC issued today.

TDS Telecom will be able to improve broadband service to a majority of the company’s wireline locations in the US thanks to a 10-year $75 million annual cash infusion from the Federal Communications Commission high-cost universal service program. TDS is one of about 200 rural rate-of-return carriers that have committed to building out broadband service at specific speeds to a specific number of locations in exchange for receiving the funding based on the alternative Connect America model (A-CAM). TDS A-CAM broadband support will enable the company to upgrade service to nearly 160,000 homes in 25 states.

The majority of rural rate of return carriers that initially opted to receive broadband support based on the Federal Communications Commission alternative Connect America model (A-CAM) have reconfirmed those plans based on revised A-CAM broadband support offers. Those offers were reduced when demand for the A-CAM program was greater than expected. Although the commission raised the budget for the program, the additional funding was not sufficient to cover a total funding gap of $1.6 billion over 10 years. A total of 182 carriers accepted a total of 217 revised A-CAM broadband support offers, the FCC said Jan 24.

The total number of carriers that received revised offers was 191, and the total number of offers that were revised was 228. (Some carriers received more than one offer because they operate in more than one state and offers were made on a state-by-state basis.) Forty-five initial A-CAM offers made to 35 carriers were for less money than the carriers would have received by staying on the traditional program and therefore were not revised. Instead those carriers will receive the total amount of A-CAM funding they initially were offered.

Broadband wireless provider Rise Broadband issued a press release today noting that it had expanded its network in 10 market areas in conjunction with the Federal Communications Commission’s Connect America Fund (CAF) program. Rise apparently is referring to new buildouts supported, at least in part, by the funding that the company received through the rural broadband experiment (RBE) program, part of the overall CAF program for broadband expansion in rural markets. RBE was a one-time $100 million element of the CAF program that was designed to bring broadband to unserved areas but also to gain market information to help in shaping the reverse auction planned for the CAF program. Rise won $16.9 million in this iteration of the CAF program for broadband expansion in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas — and apparently is using the funding to deploy broadband wireless service using long-term evolution (LTE) technology supporting speeds up to 50 Mbps.

With the 600 MHz auction results expected soon, it’s becoming increasingly clear that those results are likely to be disappointing. More and more industry observers are predicting that prices will be considerably lower than many initially expected — and lower they were in the 2015 AWS-3 auction, the most recent major spectrum auction. The Moffett Nathanson researchers pose several potential explanations for why the 600 MHz auction results appear poised to be considerably lower than the AWS-3 results. One idea relates to the value of lower-frequency vs. higher-frequency spectrum in today’s market. It wasn’t long ago that many industry observers were referring to lower-frequency spectrum as “lakefront property” because of its excellent propagation characteristics, which enable a carrier to cover a large area with a relatively small number of cellsites – albeit with capacity constraints. At the time 600 MHz auction results were first forecast, 5G appeared to be a more distant possibility than it has proven to be. Now that carriers are talking about beginning 5G deployments in 2017, I would expect to see much more intense competition for ultra-high-frequency spectrum best suited for 5G – including spectrum in the 28 GHz, 37 GHz, 39 GHz and possibly 12 GHz bands.

The state of Massachusetts has asked the Federal Communications Commission to release federal broadband Connect America funding to states. The funding in question was rejected by the nation’s largest price cap carriers in 2015. Granting the Massachusetts request would mean the FCC would hand over approximately $1 billion to 20 states over a period of six years, according to Telecompetitor’s estimate.

Massachusetts is one of several states served in large part by Verizon for local service. Verizon, unlike most large incumbent carriers, rejected the FCC’s initial offers of Connect America Fund (CAF) broadband funding. Accordingly, Massachusetts and other Verizon states have not received little or no federal CAF cash infusion of the sort that carriers in some other states have begun to use to help cover the costs of bringing broadband to high-cost areas where broadband is not available today.

Rural stakeholders are hoping state governors can help in obtaining additional federal rural broadband funding. Just before the winter holiday break, Shirley Bloomfield, chief executive officer of NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association, sent a letter to the National Governors Association asking them to highlight broadband as a critical infrastructure initiative in their communications with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.

In the letter, Bloomfield also made two specific recommendations for boosting rural broadband deployment, including closing a budget gap in the Universal Service Fund program and creating a new capital infusion program. NTCA sent the letter when staffers learned that the Trump transition team had asked governors for input on critical infrastructure initiatives and had given the governors just a few days to respond. “Placing a priority on deployment of such networks makes sense when one considers the economic payback of such investments for individual consumers and businesses and for the States more broadly,” wrote Bloomfield in the letter. She cited a recent Hudson Institute study which found that companies investing in and operating rural broadband networks contributed $24.1 billion to the economies of the states in which they operated in 2015. A particularly notable finding was that two-thirds of the economic output actually accrued to urban areas.

The Federal Communications Commission’s decision to allow qualified low-income households to use funding from the Universal Service Lifeline program toward broadband service was welcomed back in March when it was made, but problems with the program are mounting.

Key Lifeline broadband problems: big carrier participation and rural carrier stand-alone broadband pricing. According to a press release from The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), more than 80 service providers have opted out of participation in the Lifeline broadband program for at least part of their territories. Verizon, for example, only wants to offer Lifeline broadband service in areas where it has deployed its FiOS fiber-to-the-home service. Other major service providers opting not to participate in Lifeline broadband include AT&T, Cox, Windstream, Charter, CenturyLink, FairPoint and Frontier. Reforms adopted in March called for the government to create a national eligibility verifier – essentially a database of eligible households — thereby eliminating the need for service providers to determine whether recipients are qualified to receive Lifeline payments. But according to a November 23 blog post from AT&T executive Joan Marsh, the eligibility verifier will not be fully implemented until 2019. Until then service providers are still responsible for verification – a responsibility that also entails compliance risks. Rather than take on that responsibility, AT&T would prefer to hold off on offering Lifeline broadband until the verifier is operational. Other carriers opting not to participate in the program may have similar motivation. There are a few areas where AT&T will offer a Lifeline discount on broadband – namely, anywhere the company receives high-cost Universal Service funding.

The reason is that carriers accepting high-cost program funding are required to participate in the Lifeline broadband program. But there, too, the Lifeline broadband program is encountering problems. Rural rate of return carriers, many of whom rely on high-cost funding, do not expect to be able to offer stand-alone broadband service at rates that are comparable with those available in urban areas. With rates projected to exceed $100 monthly, a $9.25 discount wouldn’t go far toward making service more affordable for low-income consumers. Rural carrier associations argue that this situation is the result of insufficient funding for the high-cost program.

The Federal Communications Commission has authorized Rural Broadband Experiment support totaling nearly $3.5 million for Lake Connections, a community-owned network in rural Lake County (MN). The support will go toward bringing broadband service to 845 census blocks comprising 8,497 locations that do not have broadband available to them today.