[1st-mile-nm] BROADBAND AUCTION WINNERS

[Richard Lowenberg]

SpaceX gets $886 million from FCC to subsidize Starlink in 35 states 
(including NM).
Charter also wins big; FCC fund will bring service to 5.2M homes and 
businesses.

JON BRODKIN - 12/7/2020,
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/spacex-gets-886-million-from-fcc-to-subsidize-starlink-in-35-states/

SpaceX has been awarded $885.51 million by the Federal Communications 
Commission to provide Starlink broadband to 642,925 rural homes and 
businesses in 35 states. The satellite provider was one of the biggest 
winners in the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, the 
results of which were released today. Funding is distributed over 10 
years, so SpaceX's haul will amount to a little over $88.5 million per 
year.

Charter Communications, the second-largest US cable company after 
Comcast, did even better. Charter is set to receive $1.22 billion over 
10 years to bring service to 1.06 million homes and businesses in 24 
states.

FCC funding can be used in different ways depending on the type of 
broadband service. Cable companies like Charter and other wireline 
providers generally use the money to expand their networks into new 
areas that don't already have broadband. But with Starlink, SpaceX could 
theoretically provide service to all of rural America once it has 
launched enough satellites, even without FCC funding.

One possibility is that SpaceX could use the FCC money to lower prices 
in the 642,925 funded locations, but the FCC announcement didn't say 
whether that's what SpaceX will do. We asked SpaceX and the FCC for more 
details and will update this article if we get any answers. Starlink is 
in beta and costs $99 per month, plus a one-time fee of $499 for the 
user terminal, mounting tripod, and router.

The 35 states where SpaceX won FCC funding are Alabama, Arkansas, 
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, 
Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, 
Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New 
Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, 
Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and 
Wyoming.

Charter is getting funding in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, 
Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, 
Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, 
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, 
Washington, and Wisconsin.

180 ISPs get funding in 49 states
Overall, the FCC announced $9.2 billion ($920 million per year) in 
funding for 180 bidders in 49 states and the Commonwealth of the 
Northern Mariana Islands. Windstream, Frontier, and CenturyLink were 
also among the winners.

Combined, the 180 providers will "deploy high-speed broadband to over 
5.2 million unserved homes and businesses. Moreover, 99.7 percent of 
these locations will be receiving broadband with speeds of at least 
100/20Mbps, with an overwhelming majority (over 85 percent) getting 
gigabit-speed broadband," the FCC said. In addition to wireline and 
satellite, the winning ISPs included fixed-wireless providers.

The FCC had set aside $16 billion for this first phase of the RDOF but 
said it ended up covering nearly 99 percent of eligible locations with 
just $9.2 billion. Since the RDOF has $20.4 billion overall, there will 
be $11.2 billion available in the next phase of the RDOF.

"The auction used a multi-round, descending clock auction format in 
which bidders indicated in each round whether they would commit to 
provide service to an area at a given performance tier and latency at 
the current round’s support amount," the FCC said. "The auction was 
technologically neutral and open to new providers, and bidding 
procedures prioritized bids for higher speeds and lower latency." The 
FCC initially disputed SpaceX's contention that its low Earth orbit 
(LEO) satellites can provide latency under 100ms but eventually 
relented.

No other LEO satellite providers are getting the FCC funding. Hughes, a 
traditional satellite provider, got $1.27 million over 10 years to serve 
3,678 locations in Rhode Island but did not get funding in any other 
states. Hughes relies on geostationary satellites that don't match 
Starlink on speed or latency, though Hughes is investing in LEO 
satellite operator OneWeb.

More big winners
Other winners include LTD Broadband, which was awarded $1.32 billion to 
serve 528,088 locations in 15 states; the Rural Electric Cooperative 
Consortium with $1.1 billion for 618,476 locations in 22 states; 
Windstream with $522.89 million for 192,567 locations in 18 states; AMG 
Technology Investment Group with $429.23 million for 206,136 locations 
in 12 states; Frontier with $370.9 million for 127,188 locations in 
eight states; Resound Networks with $310.68 million for 219,239 
locations in seven states; Connect Everyone LLC (aka Starry) with 
$268.85 million for 108,506 locations in nine states; CenturyLink with 
$262.37 million for 77,257 locations in 20 states; GeoLinks with $234.89 
million for 128,297 locations in three states; and Etheric Networks with 
$248.63 million for 64,463 locations in one state (California).

Like other universal service programs, the RDOF and Connect America Fund 
(its predecessor program) are paid for by Americans through fees imposed 
on phone bills. The first phase of the RDOF targets census blocks where 
there are no ISPs offering service with at least 25Mbps download and 
3Mbps upload speeds.

That measure leaves out a lot of unserved homes because FCC data counts 
an entire census block as served even if only one home in the block can 
get service. The FCC has ordered ISPs to provide more precise data using 
geospatial maps and is on track to conduct the next RDOF auction after 
the data is collected. The $11.2 billion for Phase 2 would target 
partially served areas and unserved areas that didn't get funding in the 
first round.

The FCC has a separate $1.5 billion program for Alaska, which is not 
among the 49 states that will receive RDOF funding.


---------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Lowenberg, Executive Director
1st-Mile Institute     505-603-5200
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504,
rl at 1st-mile.org     www.1st-mile.org
---------------------------------------------------------------