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

[Steve Ross]

There's really no new money. Just a tweek of the rules as the last cycle of
multiyear grants starts expiring this year. National media is so, so easy
to fool.

BTW, Bernie has an empty, unhinged $150 billion rural broadband idea, to
trump Warren's slightly better researched (via offhand Susan Crawford
remark) unhinged $80 billion rural broadband idea. Bernie has never once
attached true budgets or revenue sources to any of his bills or campaign
promises, EVER. Warren usually does, but not this time!

My rural data, published in Broadband Communities starting in 2014, helped
justify $2.35 billion new money appropriated in 2018, and I talked to many,
many congressional staffers that year. $600 million has already been passed
out in ReConnect and another $550 million was just placed on the table.
Seems such a pittance now, except that it is real money, not FCC recycle
and not empty promises (well, we're still following where the money
went...).

Steve Ross

On Sat, Feb 1, 2020, 12:53 AM Mimbres Communications <mimcom at sw-ei.com>
wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 12:38 PM Robert Jacobson <
> 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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