How the FCC Plans to Stretch Budget to Support New Broadband Speed Target

When the Federal Communications Commission in December 2014 raised the broadband speed target for the Connect America Fund to 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream, some stakeholders questioned carriers’ ability to meet that target without an increase in the size of the fund, considering that the previous downstream speed target was a considerably lower 4 Mbps. The order raising the target speed has now been made public -- and in it the FCC offers more details about how the new target speed will be implemented, along with the thinking behind the commission’s latest decisions on the CAF program.

Two important take-aways are:
1) Despite the new target speed, the number of homes to which price cap carriers accepting CAF money will be required to bring service will not increase much if at all and could actually decrease.

2) Competitive carriers will have the opportunity to bid to deliver broadband to more homes than originally anticipated.