On May 11, 2026, President Trump signed the Rural Broadband Protection Act of 2025 (S. 98) into law. The new law requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) to screen applicants for high-cost universal service broadband funding before committing funds, and sets minimum financial penalties for applicants who default before receiving funding.

The Slow March Through Congress

For years, a version of this law existed only as a bill. The Rural Broadband Protection Act was introduced in the 117th Congress, reintroduced in the 118th—where it passed the Senate unanimously but never reached the House floor—and introduced again in the 119th Congress as S. 98. The bill was introduced by Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) with Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Curtis (R-UT) as original co-sponsors.

The persistence reflects a specific, documented failure.

When the FCC ran the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF)—a reverse auction that in 2020 initially awarded $9.23 billion to bring broadband to 5,220,833 locations in 49 states—the Commission largely assessed winning bidders' qualifications after the auction was over, through a post-bid, "long-form" application process (a detailed post-auction filing in which winning bidders were required to demonstrate their qualifications). The result was a wave of defaults and denials that left roughly 1.9 million of those locations without the broadband service the FCC had promised RDOF would make possible.

The most prominent example: the FCC ultimately denied the program's largest winning bidder, LTD Broadband, a Minnesota-based fixed wireless provider, which initially won $1.3 billion in RDOF awards, after concluding the company "was not reasonably capable of offering the required gigabit-speed, low-latency service throughout the broad areas where it won auction support."¹ That determination came only after the auction had closed and the award had been tentatively made.

According to a Benton Institute for Broadband & Society analysis of FCC data, as of 2025, RDOF winning bidders had defaulted on $3.3 billion of the $9.2 billion in RDOF awards. More than 95 percent of those defaults occurred before any funding was authorized—meaning little direct financial cost to taxpayers—but the defaults generated enormous opportunity costs: 1.9 million locations that were effectively locked out of other federal programs because they had been counted as "committed" to RDOF service that never came.

The Rural Broadband Protection Act is Congress's answer. The law amends Section 254 of the Communications Act of 1934—the statutory foundation of the Universal Service Fund (USF)—by adding a new subsection ("m") that requires the FCC to screen applicants before making awards, and to set minimum financial penalties for those who default before funding flows.

What the Law Says

The Rural Broadband Protection Act defines two terms that determine its scope:

1. Covered funding means any new offer of high-cost universal service program (known as the High Cost program) funding—including funding provided through a reverse competitive bidding mechanism—for the deployment of a broadband-capable network and the provision of supported services over that network. The explicit inclusion of reverse bidding mechanisms is a direct reference to RDOF-style auctions.
2. New covered funding award means an award made based on an application submitted on or after the date the FCC promulgates rules. This is entirely prospective: the law applies only to future awards made under rules yet to be written. The law does not unwind any existing commitments, nor does it help communities stranded by past defaults.

The Rulemaking Mandate 

The FCC must initiate a rulemaking within 180 days (early November 2026) to establish a vetting process for applicants for, and "other recipients of," a new covered funding award. The statute requires initiation—not completion. The FCC must issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) within that window, but there is no statutory deadline for a final rule.

Carefully Chosen Language

The phrase "other recipients" extends the vetting requirement beyond initial applicants. This could encompass entities that acquire or assume existing awards—a potential safeguard against shell companies or assignment of commitments to unqualified successors. The rulemaking will need to define this boundary, as it’s not currently defined by the Rural Broadband Protection Act.

What Applicants Must Show

An applicant must include in its initial application—not in a post-auction long-form filing—a proposal with sufficient detail and documentation for the FCC to determine that the applicant has:

• Technical capabilities,
• Financial capabilities,
• Operational capabilities, and
• A reasonable business plan

…sufficient to deploy the proposed network and deliver services with the performance characteristics and requirements defined by the FCC and as pledged by the applicant.

The Rural Broadband Protection Act requires the FCC to be "consistent with principles of technology neutrality." The vetting rules cannot favor one technology platform over another. A fixed wireless applicant, a fiber applicant, and a satellite applicant must all be evaluated against the same technical, financial, and operational standards.

How the FCC Must Evaluate Applications

The FCC must evaluate each application against two benchmarks:

First, "reasonable and well-established technical, financial, and operational standards," including the technical standards adopted in orders relating to the Digital Opportunity Data Collection proceeding (WC Docket No. 19-195)—or any successor collection—for entities that must report broadband availability. Through the Digital Opportunity Data Collection proceeding, the FCC established the Broadband Data Collection (BDC) and the National Broadband Map, which identifies broadband availability at the individual location level. The technical standards developed in that proceeding govern how providers must document and map their service areas—including requirements for geospatial coverage data, location-level reporting, and data submission methodology.

The Digital Opportunity Data Collection reference is the new statute's example of the kind of established technical standards the FCC should draw on, not an exhaustive list. Those standards were designed for a different purpose, however: demonstrating where a provider already serves customers, not evaluating whether an applicant can build a new network. How the FCC translates mapping-and-reporting standards into pre-award capability standards for prospective applicants is a question the rulemaking will answer.

Second, the applicant's history of compliance with the requirements of the FCC and "other government broadband deployment funding programs." The phrase "other government broadband deployment funding programs" is broad, encompassing the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program (administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)), the ReConnect Program (administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture), and potentially state grant programs.

The four federal agencies with major broadband deployment funding programs—the FCC, NTIA, USDA, and Treasury—have an existing memorandum of understanding (MOU), signed in May 2024, that commits them to share information about funded broadband deployment projects and to develop consistent data formats and reporting processes across their programs. What the MOU does not provide is a compliance history or program performance tracking system the Rural Broadband Protection Act's vetting requirement will need: it covers post-award project data—where money went and to whom—not a record of whether a recipient performed adequately under its obligations. A 2025 GAO report found significant gaps in how that framework has been implemented, noting that the agencies "have not clearly defined or documented key areas of their collaborative efforts, such as what 'covered data' include when sharing information about their broadband deployment projects, as referenced in the memorandum," and have not established timelines for providing funded project data to the Broadband Funding Map (an interactive, online tool from the FCC that displays federal government-funded broadband infrastructure projects) or documented a formal process for avoiding duplicate funding.² State broadband programs are outside the MOU's scope entirely: the MOU is a federal-to-federal agreement covering specific federal funding streams. Whether and how state grant program compliance data will factor into FCC vetting is entirely unaddressed by the MOU and by the Rural Broadband Protection Act.

Minimum Penalties

For any new covered funding award, the FCC must set a penalty for pre-authorization defaults of at least $9,000 per violation and may not set the base forfeiture below 30 percent of the applicant's total support unless the FCC demonstrates the need for lower penalties in a particular instance. The Senate Commerce Committee report accompanying the bill says the new law "would set minimum penalties for defaulting entities at an amount higher than the amounts the FCC has set for recent auctions."³ 

These penalty provisions apply only to pre-authorization defaults—failures before funding is authorized and disbursement begins. Defaults that occur after money starts flowing are not covered by these new minimums.

The 5G Fund: Where This Law Will Matter Soonest

In 2020, the FCC adopted a Report and Order establishing the 5G Fund for Rural America (5G Fund), which, like RDOF, is designed to use a reverse auction to distribute universal service support to bring 5G mobile broadband service to rural areas that would be unlikely to otherwise see deployment of 5G broadband service based upon new mobile coverage data submitted in the FCC's Broadband Data Collection.⁴ The 5G Fund is meant to help ensure that rural Americans enjoy the same benefits from mobile services as their urban counterparts.  

The Senate Commerce Committee report accompanying the Rural Broadband Protection Act notes the FCC's 2024 Second Report and Order for the 5G Fund for Rural America, and the Commission's plans to make nearly $10 billion in Universal Service Fund support available to carriers deploying 5G networks in areas that currently lack 5G coverage.

When the FCC moves forward with 5G Fund auctions, the vetting requirements the Rural Broadband Protection Act mandates will apply to applicants.⁵ This is the most immediate near-term context in which the law has a practical effect, independent of whatever the FCC ultimately decides about its legacy high-cost fixed broadband mechanisms.

What the Rural Broadband Protection Act Does Not Do

A few things are notably absent from the Rural Broadband Protection Act. 

• The law does not apply retroactively. Past RDOF defaults are not addressed.
• The FCC has no deadline to complete the rulemaking.
• The new law does not prescribe how the FCC must conduct vetting (third-party auditors, staff review, etc.).
• The law does not mandate new speed or service quality requirements—those remain entirely within FCC discretion.
• Congress has not included any new enforcement office, inspector general function, or congressional reporting requirements.
• Penalty provisions only apply to defaults that occur before the FCC has authorized funding, not post-authorization defaults.

The Rural Broadband Protection Act and High Cost Program Reform

On May 20, the FCC is expected to launch a proceeding titled Reforming the High-Cost Program for an All-IP Future. There are currently a dozen different mechanisms under the High Cost umbrella. The proposed NPRM focuses on a specific subset—the mechanisms that serve rate-of-return carriers, a class of smaller rural telephone companies that historically have set their rates and received support based on their actual costs of service. Both the Rural Broadband Protection Act and the FCC's High-Cost Reform NPRM are aimed at the same general problem, but they operate at different points in the funding timeline and address different mechanisms.

The Rural Broadband Protection Act is prospective and auction-focused. The NPRM is about ongoing support to existing carriers. The Rural Broadband Protection Act's vetting requirements apply to "new covered funding awards"—competitive bids and new applications. The mechanisms under review in the NPRM are largely cost-based support flowing continuously to carriers that already have study area obligations, not new auction winners. (A study area is a carrier's FCC-defined geographic service territory, and the obligations attached to it are what determine whether they receive high-cost support.)

The vetting requirements the new law mandates would apply if the FCC creates new competitive funding mechanisms through this proceeding—but if the Commission chooses to let the legacy mechanisms sunset without replacement, there may be no new covered funding awards to vet in these specific areas for the foreseeable future.

The Rural Broadband Protection Act's compliance-history requirement looks across federally-supported deployment programs, while the NPRM looks at BEAD overlap. Both documents grapple with the coordination problem between FCC programs and other federal broadband investments. The Rural Broadband Protection Act requires the FCC to consider applicants' history in "other government broadband deployment funding programs." The NPRM asks how to handle areas where BEAD commitments already exist. These are different questions, but they share the same underlying challenge: federal broadband policy now involves multiple agencies, multiple programs, and multiple funding streams, and the FCC's mechanisms were not designed with that landscape in mind.

If the FCC launches new competitive mechanisms, the Rural Broadband Protection Act's requirements will govern them. The NPRM asks whether a new model-based or competitive mechanism should be established. If the FCC creates any new competitive award process—an auction, a reverse auction, or a competitive application process—the Rural Broadband Protection Act's vetting requirements will apply to applicants for that funding. The FCC will need to have completed (not just initiated) its vetting rulemaking before making any new covered funding awards.

The law's new penalty requirement creates a floor for whatever comes next. Whatever new high-cost funding the FCC establishes—if it establishes any—must carry minimum pre-authorization default penalties of at least $9,000 per violation and a base forfeiture floor of 30 percent of total support. This applies regardless of which option the NPRM proceeding ultimately produces.

What to Watch

There are a number of issues that stakeholders may want to keep an eye on as the FCC implements the Rural Broadband Protection Act. The Rural Broadband Protection Act does two things: embeds in statute a requirement that the FCC screen high-cost broadband funding applicants before making awards, and sets a higher floor on penalties for pre-authorization defaults.

In the vetting rulemaking:

• How will the FCC define and obtain cross-agency compliance data for the compliance-history requirement? Will NTIA and USDA share program records? What data systems need to be built? How will state broadband deployment grant program compliance data factor into FCC vetting?
• Who counts as an "other recipient" subject to vetting—and does that reach assignees of existing awards?
• What procedural form will vetting take? Third-party audits? Staff review? A defined evidentiary standard?

The High-Cost Reform NPRM does something larger and more uncertain: asking whether the mechanisms that have sustained rural telephone infrastructure for decades are still justified in a landscape where LEO satellite now reaches nearly every location in rate-of-return areas that terrestrial service doesn't, where $42.5 billion in BEAD funding is flowing, and where some carriers receiving substantial subsidies currently have no forward-looking buildout obligations.

Core Policy Shift?

Moving the required showing of capabilities from a post-auction long-form application to the initial application is a structural change the RDOF experience made necessary. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) noted that because the FCC currently evaluates applicants for the High Cost program, CBO expects the rules issued under S. 98 will mostly codify the FCC's current policies. (CBO also estimated it would cost the FCC less than $500,000 to issue the required rules.) What the statute does is lock the practice into law so rules cannot be abandoned by a future administration.

But the Rural Broadband Protection Act's vetting requirements may never be applied in any meaningful way if the FCC does not create new competitive broadband funding mechanisms. The law codifies a lesson learned from RDOF at precisely the moment when the FCC may be moving away from RDOF-style auctions altogether. Congress may have spent three Congresses passing a fix for programs the FCC is in the process of retiring, while the communities that bore the cost of RDOF's failures received nothing.

Tech Neutral or Tech Blind?

The FCC's vetting rules must be technology-neutral, but the FCC must evaluate applicants against "performance characteristics and requirements defined by the Commission and as pledged by the applicant." So if the FCC sets high-performance requirements—say, specific latency or upload speed thresholds—those requirements could effectively disadvantage certain technologies without the vetting process itself being facially discriminatory. Technology-neutral vetting does not guarantee technology-neutral outcomes.

Compliance History and New Entrants

The law requires the FCC to evaluate applicants' compliance history with other broadband programs. But first-time applicants with no prior FCC or NTIA track record—like electric cooperatives, Tribal entities, municipalities, and community broadband organizations—could be disadvantaged by a compliance history standard that effectively favors established incumbent carriers. How will the FCC design the vetting rules to avoid screening out non-traditional applicants who could be the most committed to serving unserved communities?

What About Post-Authorization Accountability?

What happens to a provider that clears a rigorous vetting process and then fails to build? Are the FCC's existing post-authorization default rules adequate, given RDOF's experience with providers who were authorized and then missed milestones?

What Comes Next

None of the questions raised above has been answered. These FCC proceedings will be open for public comment, and the record built by rural carriers, state broadband officials, consumer advocates, digital equity practitioners, and other stakeholders will shape what comes next.

Notes

1. FCC, Order on Review, FCC 23-103, 38 FCC Rcd 11697, 11703, para. 16 (2023)
2. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Broadband Programs: Agencies Need to Further Improve Their Data Quality and Coordination Efforts, GAO-25-107207 (April 2025), https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107207.
3. S. Rept. 119-14, at 4.
4. On September 21, 2023, the FCC adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on a limited set of critical issues for continuing the implementation of the 5G Fund. Further rules necessary to move forward with the 5G Fund Phase I auction were adopted on August 14, 2024, in a Second Report and Order, Order on Reconsideration, and Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. 
5. The FCC will need to have completed—not just initiated—its vetting rulemaking before making any new covered funding awards, including 5G Fund awards. The 180-day initiation clock matters, but the rulemaking's completion timeline is what will govern the 5G Fund's operational readiness.

Sources

S. 98, 119th Congress, Rural Broadband Protection Act of 2025 (Enrolled April 22, 2026). All statutory provisions cited refer to new § 254(m) of the Communications Act of 1934, as added by Section 2 of S. 98. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-119s98enr

S. Rept. 119-14, Rural Broadband Protection Act of 2025, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (April 28, 2025), including CBO Cost Estimate. https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/119th-congress/senate-report/14

FCC, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, "Reforming the High-Cost Program for an All-IP Future," WC Docket Nos. 26-96 and 10-90 (Circulated April 29, 2026, for consideration at May 20, 2026 Open Meeting). Draft document; does not constitute official FCC action. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-421210A1.pdf

FCC, Order on Review, FCC 23-103, 38 FCC Rcd 11697 (2023) (LTD Broadband denial). https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-103A1_Rcd.pdf

FCC, Second Report and Order, FCC 24-89 (5G Fund for Rural America, August 29, 2024). https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-89A1.pdf

FCC, NTIA, USDA, and Treasury, Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Information Sharing (May 9, 2024). https://www.fcc.gov/document/memorandum-understanding-between-fcc-ntia-usda-and-treasury

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, "New Dataset Reveals Impact of RDOF Defaults on Each State," February 18, 2025. https://www.benton.org/blog/new-dataset-reveals-impact-rdof-defaults-each-state

Congressional Budget Office, Cost Estimate: S. 98, Rural Broadband Protection Act of 2025 (March 10, 2025). https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61245

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Broadband Programs: Agencies Need to Further Improve Their Data Quality and Coordination Efforts, GAO-25-107207 (April 2025). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107207

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

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