Universal Service Fund

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund is building on the success of the Connect America Phase II auction. But we’re also making some significant changes to our CAF II approach—changes that will mean better networks covering more Americans. We’re more than doubling the minimum speeds that the auction will support from 10/1 Mbps in CAF II to 25/3 Mbps. We’re increasing the weights on bids to favor higher speeds and lower latency.

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.

The percentage of end-user phone bills that go toward the Universal Service Fund (USF) has been climbing and there are serious questions about the sustainability of that funding mechanism, despite a relatively stable USF budget. The money for USF comes from companies that offer interstate and international long-distance telecom services (i.e., voice services). At one time most of the money went toward voice services but over the years, more and more of it has gone towards broadband.

Congress is on the verge of passing legislation to improve broadband maps. Unfortunately, tucked inside the “Broadband DATA Act” is a provision that could unintentionally jeopardize broadband funding for schools, libraries, and healthcare providers.

In the last few weeks of January 2020, several lawmakers from New York wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai over concerns about a recent decision to "make all of New York State ineligible for Phase I Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) awards." On Jan 30, 2020, Chairman Pai responded by stating that the draft report and order, particularly the RDOF's Phase I awards, "contained some overly broadband language on that issue.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the February Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Friday, February 28, 2020:

Here's the agenda for the Federal Communications Commission's February open meeting:

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau established the procedures for its investment of up to $691.2 million over the next ten years to support the deployment of advanced, hardened broadband and voice networks to all locations in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau announced a $31 million settlement with TeleQuality Communications for violating competitive bidding and rate rules and overbilling the FCC’s Rural Health Care Program. The settlement requires TeleQuality to provide the Universal Service Fund with $31 million worth of repayments and forfeitures of payment claims as a sanction. Over a four-year period, from 2015-2018, the company admits to using fabricated sales quotes as urban rates and failing to use FCC-required methods for determining rural rates.

We encourage the Federal Communications Commission to take a broad, meaningful look at broadband deployment as it relates to its use and to investigate data that demonstrate low-income neighborhoods lack fiber infrastructure. We reiterate that the FCC should reaffirm its 2019 Broadband Deployment Report conclusion that fixed and mobile broadband services are complementary, not substitutes for each other. The FCC’s Broadband Deployment Report and Form 477 data collection must also incorporate key