The Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission), as set out in an Order, has waived its rules to eliminate the caps on upfront payments and multi-year commitments for FY 2020 to ensure that all Rural Health Care (RHC) program requests for support are funded in full, responding to the sweeping impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The cap serves to prevent the large, upfront costs of broadband construction and long term investments from foreclosing the ability of health care providers to use the RHC program funding to obtain recurring services over the course of a funding year. But given the surplus in RHC program funding this year, all requests can be fully funded and the Commission has determined that it is better to fully fund these requests rather than rolling the funds over to future years given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
