The Federal Communications Commission announced Monday that millions of rural Americans will gain access to high-speed Internet service through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction.
Underserved areas in Dent and Phelps counties were part of the auction, and Aptitude Internet Solutions of Farmington was the big winner in both counties.
It appears the two biggest winners for service in Dent County and millions of dollars in federal money to make it happen, are Aptitude Internet Solutions and a bidder listed as Rural Electric Cooperative Consortium. AIS won four of six census block groups (CBGs) in Dent County, while RECC won two. The applicant address for RECC is listed in the application as being based in Norman, Okla., and it appears to be a multi-state company with wide-ranging services.
In Phelps County, Aptitude Solutions won nine of 12 census block groups that were auctioned. Wisper-CABO 904 Consortium won two and LTD Broadband one.
Aptitude Solutions will bring broadband to 13,535 CBGs, all in Missouri, according to documents released with the announcement. RECC is one of the largest bidders, bringing broadband to 618,476 locations in 22 states.
Details of how and when the service will begin to take place were not immediately released. The Salem News and its sister paper, Phelps County Focus, will contact the bidders for more details and update this story.
Auction results released today show that bidders won funding to deploy high-speed broadband to over 5.2 million unserved homes and businesses, almost 99% of the locations available in the auction. Moreover, 99.7% of these locations will be receiving broadband with speeds of at least 100/20 Mbps, with an overwhelming majority (over 85%) getting gigabit-speed broadband.
Aptitude Internet Solutions formed almost 10 years ago, when Cole Smith and his partners first made a list of things they liked and disliked about internet service providers, according to the company’s website.
“We discovered that our biggest complaints—hidden fees, impersonal service, spotty or slow connections, data limits—were shared by many, especially those living in rural areas,” Smith is quoted on the website. “The question, then, was simple: ‘How do we make the internet better?’”
Successful bidders have six years to bring broadband to the areas they won. Missouri got $346 million in federal money for 17 bidders.
Aptitude Internet Solutions lists three broadband plans on its website: 5 Mbps download and 1 upload for $40 a month; 10 Mbps download and 2 upload for $65 a month and 20 Mbps download and 3 upload for $85 a month.
CCO Holdings, LLC (Charter Communications) was assigned the most locations, just over 1.05 million. A total of 180 bidders won auction support, to be distributed over the next 10 years.
A broad range of providers successfully competed in the Phase I auction, including cable operators, electric cooperatives, incumbent telephone companies, satellite companies, and fixed wireless providers. And the FCC’s structuring of the reverse auction yielded significant savings, as competitive bidding among over 300 providers yielded an allocation of $9.2 billion in support out of the $16 billion set aside for Phase I of the auction. Importantly, the $6.8 billion in potential Phase I support that was not allocated will be rolled over into the future Phase II auction, which now can draw upon a budget of up to $11.2 billion in targeting partially-served areas (and the few unserved areas that did not receive funding through Phase I).
“I’m thrilled with the incredible success of this auction, which brings welcome news to millions of unconnected rural Americans who for too long have been on the wrong side of the digital divide. They now stand to gain access to high-speed, high-quality broadband service,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “We structured this innovative and groundbreaking auction to be technologically neutral and to prioritize bids for high-speed, low-latency offerings. We aimed for maximum leverage of taxpayer dollars and for networks that would meet consumers’ increasing broadband needs, and the results show that our strategy worked. This auction was the single largest step ever taken to bridge the digital divide and is another key success for the Commission in its ongoing commitment to universal service. I thank our staff for working so hard and so long to get this auction done on time, particularly during the pandemic.”
The auction used a multi-round, descending clock auction format in which bidders indicated in each round whether they would commit to provide service to an area at a given performance tier and latency at the current round’s support amount. The auction was technologically neutral and open to new providers, and bidding procedures prioritized bids for higher speeds and lower latency.
The auction unleashed robust price competition that resulted in more locations being awarded at less cost to Americans who pay into the Universal Service Fund. The 5,220,833 locations assigned support in the auction had an initial reserve price of over $26 billion over the next decade; through vigorous competition among bidders, the final price tag to cover these locations is now just over $9 billion, with the vast majority of locations receiving gigabit broadband—far above the 25/3 Mbps minimum level of service that providers could bid on in the auction.
Providers must meet periodic buildout requirements that will require them to reach all assigned locations by the end of the sixth year. They are incentivized to build out to all locations as fast as possible.
The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction is part of a broader effort by the FCC to close the digital divide in rural America and focus limited universal service funds on unserved areas that most need support. In October 2020, the Commission adopted rules creating the 5G Fund for Rural America, which will distribute up to $9 billion over the next decade to bring 5G wireless broadband connectivity to unserved areas in rural America.
More information on the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction is available at https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904, including complete auction results and a map of winning bids.