[1st-mile-nm] Comments per FCC Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

[John Badal]

The best indicator of the RDOF's ineffectiveness for our state is the FCC's publication of the number of eligible locations in NM for RDOF auction funding: 74,000.  Can you believe that the CAF programs have satisfactorily covered everyone else in our rural areas?

John



Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone



-------- Original message --------
From: Mimbres Communications <mimcom at sw-ei.com>
Date: 1/31/20 10:53 PM (GMT-07:00)
To: Robert Jacobson <robert.jacobson at atelier-tomorrow.com>
Cc: 1st-Mile-NM <1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org>
Subject: Re: [1st-mile-nm] Comments per FCC Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 12:38 PM Robert Jacobson <robert.jacobson at atelier-tomorrow.com<mailto:robert.jacobson at atelier-tomorrow.com>> wrote:
My immediate response to the FCC's “Rural Digital Opportunity Fund” announcement yesterday?

Just more pandering….

Yes -- but roughly what we expected, given the current makeup of the Commission.


Via CAF-2, the preceding FCC fund, two of the vendors serving a community in which I'm working — CenturyLink and Viasat — have each taken hundreds of millions of funding, yet for two years running haven't made good on their existing pledges of seriously extending broadband service.

An unfortunately familiar story in rural NM.


Is there a reason that ths next round of funding won’t be more feathering of the ISPs’ nests?

Change that to "entrenched incumbent ISPs" and I'll agree with you.


the FCC, by limiting distribution of the “new" funds only to communities with "no broadband service whatsoever,” means only one local customer with broadband, defined by the USDA as 10 mbps down and 1 mbps up, and by the FCC in this announcement as 25 mBps down,3 mbps up — neither of which 99% of the global internet community would consider “broadband” — will disqualify a community from receiving a grant.

IMO the biggest issue here is the rush to allocate money before the November elections with no regard for efficiency or effectiveness.

Two FCC proceedings (WC Docket 19-195, Establishing the Digital Opportunity Data Collection and WC Docket 11-10 Modernizing the FCC Form 477 Data Program) and a related NTIA RFC (Docket 180427421–8421–01, Improving the Quality and Accuracy of Broadband Availability Data) have been working their way through the system.  These would change both the way locations are enumerated and whether they are considered serviceable, which will in turn affect FCC, USDA, and a significant portion of state subsidy programs.  A number of us filed comments requesting that RDOF money be disbursed after the initial phases of that work were completed.  FCC elected to move ahead (and move big) using the existing (hugely flawed) Form 477 data.


In short, this appears to be much adieu about nothing, just another FCC bone tossed to existing ISPs

RDOF mostly follows the lead of previous subsidy programs, which (via a range of rules and requirements) effectively foreclose participation by the majority of small, independent providers.  This is by design.  Look at the players.

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