Report and Order Creating Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

The Federal Communications Commission adopts the framework for the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. It builds on the successful model from 2018’s Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II auction, which allocated $1.488 billion to deploy networks serving more than 700,000 unserved rural homes and businesses across 45 states. The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund represents the FCC’s single biggest step to close the digital divide by providing up to $20.4 billion to connect millions more rural homes and small businesses to high-speed broadband networks. It will ensure that networks stand the test of time by prioritizing higher network speeds and lower latency, so that those benefitting from these networks will be able to use tomorrow’s Internet applications as well as today’s.