The FCC has adopted a Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration establishing its rules for the Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II reverse auction for $2 billion over 10 years toward 10/1 Mbps or faster broadband in rural areas where price cap carriers declined CAF support and/or have extremely high deployment costs. The Report and Order establishes a weighting scheme for bids linked with four performance tiers and two latency tiers that were adopted last year:
- Minimum performance (10/1 Mbps) bids will have a weight of 65;
- Baseline performance (25/3 Mbps) bids will have a weight of 45;
- Above-baseline performance (100/20 Mbps) bids will have a weight of 15;
- Gigabit-performance (1 Gbps/500 Mbps) bids will have a weight of zero;
- High latency bids will have a weight of 25; and
- Low latency bids will have a weight of zero.
The FCC did not adopt alternative interim milestones for non-terrestrial providers or providers that already have infrastructure deployed.
In the Order on Reconsideration, the FCC granted petitions to reconsider: (i) its decision to re-auction areas served by high-latency providers that fall short of certain subscribership levels; and (ii) usage allowances for baseline and gigabit performance tiers. The FCC also denied a petition for reconsideration regarding the scoring of bids relative to reserve price.
