FCC Meets With Stakeholders on What to Ask in 5G Fund NPRM

The NPRM is expected "in the first part of this year," likely April or May, said Rural Wireless Association General Counsel Carri Bennet. "March would be a little fast." Others have said it could be ready as early as for the March 31 commissioners' meeting (see 2002050048) .

RWA would like the notice to tee up questions of concern to its members, such as whether the program would carve out funding for smaller providers that don't win in the reverse auctions but need continued support to expand, upgrade and maintain their legacy networks. Bennet wants the NPRM to ask about the definition of rural. She raised concerns about the proposed reverse auction. "Reverse auctions clearly favor economies of scale" and larger national carriers, she said. "Large companies had 20 years to do 2G or 3G and had licenses to build out to those areas" but often didn't, she said.

CTIA declined comment. The FCC also declined comment.

Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld wouldn't use a reverse auction here: "I'd give preference to local providers versus national or regional carriers." Feld recommended letting local providers use wireless licenses to serve rural communities if the national carriers aren't using their spectrum there. "Let the people who actually want to provide the service provide the service," he said. Feld said when allocating funds based on the lowest bid in a reverse auction "there's always an impulse to skimp as much as possible." He would like the NPRM to consider quality of service measurements.

Vermont's Department of Public Service wants the FCC to consider alternatives to a reverse auction. That could be state block grants, it said in a filing, posted Wednesday in docket 20-32.

Next Century Cities Executive Director Francella Ochillo said USF support for rural wireline and mobile broadband must be coordinated. "You need wireline infrastructure to support 5G," she said. Ochillo recommended the FCC hold Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auctions first so rural communities building a 5G network will have a fiber backhaul available. "If you go to some of these rural communities, they know there's no possibility of 5G coming to them in the near future." Ochillo would like FCC staff to proactively ask local leaders for feedback on its proposed rules.

Some rural areas are so hard to deploy in because of topography or weather that carriers may need extra enticements within the program to serve there, said Competitive Carriers Association CEO Steve Berry. Make sure the new rural 5G fund retains the USF founding principles to bring support to unserved and underserved areas, said Berry. "Is it focused on closing the digital divide and bringing basic connectivity" to rural areas, he asked. "When you don't have any G, that's an area that should have a high priority."

"Mapping is the first thing to get a handle on," said National Grange Legislative Director Burton Eller. "You've got to have a target to reach before you can go out there and do something." In rural America, he said, "some of what we have out there is not much better than dial-up."

"I wouldn't give out the money until I had more accurate mapping data, which is the same problem I had with RDOF," said Benton Institute for Broadband & Society Senior Fellow Gigi Sohn. She called mapping the biggest area of concern she would have in an NPRM. Her second concern is whether the money will primarily go to "everyday rural Americans" or for private enterprise use. With the exception of the $1 billion proposed to go to precision agriculture applications, the rest of a rural 5G fund should go to serve consumers, Sohn said.

Once the NPRM is released, the rules will take at least another year to finalize, Bennet predicted. "I can't see an auction scheduled on this until at least 2022."