Chairman Pai Moves Forward to Establish 5G Fund for Rural America

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has circulated a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aiming to establish a 5G Fund for Rural America, which would distribute up to $9 billion across the country for 5G connectivity. The 5G Fund would use the Universal Service Fund to specifically target rural areas that would not see timely deployment of 5G service absent support and are not likely to be covered by the T-Mobile transaction commitments. The FCC is proposing to award funding for 5G services through a reverse auction, and will vote on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at its April 23 Open Meeting.

The FCC is seeking comment on two options for identifying areas that would be eligible for 5G Fund support:

• Under one approach for Phase I, the FCC would hold an auction in 2021 by defining eligible areas based on current data sources that identify areas as particularly rural and thus in the greatest need of universal service support. In recognition of the challenges of ensuring that 5G service is deployed to areas that lack any mobile broadband service, the proposal would prioritize areas that have historically lacked 4G LTE or 3G service.
• The second approach would delay the 5G Fund Phase I auction until at least 2023, after collecting and processing improved mobile broadband coverage data through the  Commission’s new Digital Opportunity Data Collection.

Phase II of the 5G Fund would target support to bring wireless connectivity to harder to serve and higher-cost areas, such as farms and ranches, and make at least $1 billion available for deployments that would facilitate precision agriculture.