The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC or Commission) Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) has announced the weighted average broadband deployment for all rate-of-return carriers and the relevant deployment figure for each individual carrier based on the December 2015 Form 477 data. These broadband deployment percentages will be used to calculate the capital investment allowance for 2017 and the broadband deployment obligations that rate-of-return carriers that receive support based on legacy mechanisms will be required to fulfill over a five-year period (i.e. 2017 through 2021). Based on the December 2015 data, the weighted average broadband deployment for all rate-of-return carriers is 74 percent. The deployment figure for each individual carrier can be found at: https://transition.fcc.gov/wcb/RorCoveredDec2015.xlsx.
The percentage for each study area was determined by calculating the total number of housing
units (as reported in the 2010 U.S. Census) in those census blocks in the study area in which the carrier
reports that it has deployed broadband at a speed of 10 Mbps downstream/1 Mbps upstream (10/1 Mbps)
or above divided by the total number of housing units in the carrier’s study area. The weighted average
broadband deployment percentage for all rate-of-return carriers was calculated by dividing the total
number of housing units in those census blocks in which rate-of-return carriers report broadband
deployment at 10/1 Mbps or above by the total number of housing units in all census blocks in study areas
served by rate-of-return carriers.
