Establishing a 5G Fund for Rural America

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 54</CFR> <DEPDOC>[GN Docket No. 20-32; FCC 24-89; FRS 247283]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Establishing a 5G Fund for Rural America</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission or FCC) takes important and necessary steps to implement the 5G Fund for Rural America (5G Fund) to support the build out of advanced, 5G mobile wireless broadband networks for those who live, work, and travel in rural areas. The Commission also in this document resolves the issues raised in the five pending petitions for reconsideration of its 2020 <E T="03">5G Fund Report and Order.</E> </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective January 13, 2025. Compliance with §§ 54.322(b), 54.322(g), 54.322(h), 54.322(i), 54.322(j), 54.1014(a), 54.1014(b)(2), 54.1018(a), 54.1018(b), 54.1018(c), 54.1018(d), 54.1019(a)(1), 54.1019(a)(2), 54.1019(a)(3), 54.1019(b), 54.1022(b), and 54.1022(f) is not required until the Commission publishes a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing the compliance date. As of December 13, 2024, instruction 10.b., amending §  54.313, and published November 25, 2020, at 85 FR 75770, is withdrawn. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Federal Communications Commission, 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For additional information on this proceeding, contact Kelly Quinn, Office of Economics and Analytics, Auctions Division, (202) 418-0660 or <E T="03">Kelly.Quinn@fcc.gov,</E> Valerie M. Barrish, Office of Economics and Analytics, Auctions Division, (202) 418-0660 or <E T="03">Valerie.Barrish@fcc.gov.</E> For information regarding the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) information collection requirements contained in this PRA, contact Cathy Williams, Office of Managing Director, at (202) 418-2918 or <E T="03">Cathy.Williams@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's <E T="03">5G Fund Second Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration</E> in GN Docket No. 20-32, FCC 24-89, adopted on August 14, 2024 and released on August 29, 2024. The full text of this document is available on the Commission's website at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reignite-5g-fund-target-investments-rural-communities.</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities, send an email to <E T="03">FCC504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> 1. The Commission takes important and necessary steps in the <E T="03">5G Fund Second Report and</E> <E T="03">Order and Order on Reconsideration</E> to implement the framework for the 5G Fund for Rural America (5G Fund) to support the build out of advanced, 5G mobile wireless broadband networks for those who live, work, and travel in rural areas. After over a decade of hard work to reach this pivotal moment, the 5G Fund reflects the Commission's persistent efforts to reform and redirect universal service funds for mobile broadband to areas of the country that need them the most. As it finalizes the details for the 5G Fund, the Commission is confident that its conclusions are solidly grounded in the improved mobile coverage data obtained in the Broadband Data Collection (BDC), which is reflected on its new National Broadband Map and provides the Commission with the most comprehensive picture to date about where mobile broadband service is and is not across the entire country. Unquestionably, the Commission's decision to wait to proceed with the 5G Fund Phase I auction until the Commission had these data to rely on has dramatically improved its understanding of where high-speed mobile broadband service is being provided and has significantly enhanced its ability to hold a successful 5G Fund auction. The Commission is now far better informed regarding which communities lack mobile broadband service. 2. As the Commission noted when it adopted the <E T="03">5G Fund Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</E> ( <E T="03">5G Fund FNPRM</E> ), 88 FR 66781 (Sept. 28, 2023), the National Broadband Map reflects the stark reality that over 14 million homes and businesses nationwide continue to lack access to 5G mobile wireless broadband service. The Commission therefore undertook a tailored effort to refresh the record and reignite the 5G Fund's plan to expand the deployment of 5G service to those rural communities that remain trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide. After careful consideration of the record gathered in this proceeding, the Commission concludes that the determinations it reaches herein will best incentivize the deployment of networks providing advanced, 5G mobile wireless broadband in areas of the country where, absent subsidies, such service will continue to be lacking. 3. Specifically, in this <E T="03">5G Fund Second Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration,</E> the Commission: (1) modifies the definition of the areas that will be eligible for support in the 5G Fund Phase I auction and include areas in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that meet this eligible area definition in the 5G Fund Phase I auction; (2) increases the budget for Phase I of the 5G Fund and the Tribal reserve budget; (3) modifies the metric for accepting and identifying winning bids and adopt a service-based weighting factor for bidding in the 5G Fund Phase I auction; (4) explains how it will aggregate areas eligible for 5G Fund support to minimum geographic areas for bidding; (5) explains its approach to generally align the methodologies for demonstrating compliance with the 5G Fund public interest obligations and performance requirements with those used in the BDC; (6) modifies the schedule for transitioning from mobile legacy high-cost support to 5G Fund support consistent with recent legislative amendments; (7) requires each 5G Fund Phase I auction applicant to certify, under penalty of perjury, that it has read the public notice adopting procedures for the auction, and that it has familiarized itself with those procedures and any requirements related to the support made available for bidding in the auction; (8) requires 5G Fund support recipients to implement cybersecurity and supply chain risk management plans as a condition of receiving support; and (9) encourages 5G Fund support recipients to incorporate Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) technologies in networks funded through the 5G Fund through the use of incentive funding and an opportunity to seek additional time to meet their 5G Fund public interest obligations and performance requirements by the established service deployment milestones. 4. The Commission also resolves the issues raised in the pending petitions for reconsideration of the <E T="03">5G Fund Report and Order</E> filed by The Rural Wireless Association, Inc. (RWA) and NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association (NTCA), The Coalition of Rural Wireless Carriers (CRWC), CTIA, Smith Bagley, Inc. (SBI), and 5G Fund Supporters. <E T="03">See</E> 86 FR 6611 (Jan. 22, 2021). With the decisions the Commission reaches herein, the Commission advances its extensive efforts that began with the <E T="03">USF/ICC Transformation Order,</E> 76 FR 73830 (Nov. 29, 2011), to modernize high-cost support for mobile broadband services and proceeds with confidence that it is stretching its limited universal service fund dollars to support advanced, 5G mobile wireless broadband service to as many areas where Americans live, work and travel as possible. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> 5. In its October 2020 <E T="03">5G Fund Report and Order,</E> 85 FR 75770 (Nov. 25, 2020), the Commission established the 5G Fund and determined that it would use multi-round reverse auctions to distribute up to $9 billion, in two phases, to retarget mobile universal service in the high-cost program to bring voice and 5G mobile broadband service to rural areas of the country unlikely to otherwise see unsubsidized deployment of 5G-capable networks. In adopting a budget of up to $9 billion for the 5G Fund, the Commission explained that support would be awarded in two phases, with up to $8 billion for Phase I, of which it would reserve $680 million of support for service to Tribal lands, and at least $1 billion in Phase II, as well as any unawarded funds from Phase I. The Commission decided that it would use new, more precise, verified mobile coverage data gathered through the BDC to determine the areas eligible for support in a 5G Fund auction. The Commission defined the areas eligible for support in the 5G Fund Phase I auction as those that lack unsubsidized 4G LTE and 5G broadband service by at least one service provider based on BDC data. The Commission also decided that it would accept bids and identify winning bids in a 5G Fund auction using a support price per adjusted square kilometer. Under this approach, each eligible area would have an associated number of square kilometers that would be subject to an adjustment factor that would assign a weight to each geographic area and apply that adjustment factor to bidding for support amounts, and support amounts for an area would be determined by multiplying an area's associated adjusted square kilometers by the relevant price per square kilometer. 6. The Commission also concluded in the <E T="03">5G Fund Report and Order</E> that “[r]ural Americans deserve timely deployment of service by legacy recipients of high-cost support that is comparable to what is being offered in urban areas, and ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 324k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━