The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says it won’t be providing broader relief for broadband operators that have defaulted on grant awards via the agency’s messy and controversial Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) broadband subsidy program.

According to an FCC public notice, the FCC stated it found "no demonstrated need for broad relief" from provider penalties connected to either the RDOF or Connect America Fund II (CAF II) programs. It also shot down calls for a broader amnesty program for defaulters.

“Given the flexibility available under the existing default processes…we decline to provide a blanket amnesty,” the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau said.

In a letter to the agency last February, a broad coalition of providers and consumer organizations suggested that either reduced penalties – or some sort of amnesty program – might speed up defaults, freeing areas for upcoming broadband infrastructure bill (Broadband Equity Access And Deployment, or BEAD) subsidies.

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The group was quick to point out that areas where RDOF and CAF II money has been committed are considered “served” for purposes of BEAD deployments, potentially boxing out many desperate U.S. communities from billions in potential funding.

“Many of the RDOF and CAF II awardees who cannot or will not deploy their networks are located in states with the greatest connectivity needs, like Missouri and Mississippi,” the authors wrote. “The Commission should not permit these unserved rural communities to face this type of double whammy and be left behind once again.”

But in its statement, the FCC insisted that changes to its approach aren’t necessary because, it claims, its existing processes are working.

In the Show Me State – cradled in the center of the Ozarks – Houston, Missouri is the biggest small city in Texas County.

And what local officials have shown its 2,100 or so residents over the last four years is that it can build its own modern telecommunication infrastructure to help spark economic development and offer big city Internet connectivity at affordable rates.

It began with a citizen survey in 2019, asking residents if they would be interested in a municipal broadband service, given the inadequate offerings of the big incumbent providers. Since then – not only has the city built an 18-mile fiber ring for an institutional network (I-net) to connect the city’s facilities – it has built a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network that now covers 95 percent of the 3.6 square-mile county seat.

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“The project started in 2020 and we went live in the spring of 2021,” Randon Brown, Technology Director for the City of Houston Fiber Department, tells ILSR. “Construction of the project has taken approximately four years. (Today) 95 percent of the town (network) is operational and can be serviced.”

The city has spent $3 million of its own money to fund construction of the aerial fiber network, Brown said.

The network passes 1,200 premises with 272 subscribers now getting service from Houston Fiber, “which encompasses a mixture of residential and business customers” – though that number will soon rise to 364 (30 percent take rate) in the near future as more residents and businesses are in the pipeline waiting to be connected, he added.

Ponca City, Oklahoma officials say they’ve completed construction of a citywide fiber broadband network both ahead of schedule and under budget.

The finished network is now providing affordable, uncapped, multi-gigabit fiber access to every local resident in the community or 24,100 residents of Northern Oklahoma city.

In 1996, Ponca City began developing a 140 mile central fiber network to help connect schools, city offices, and other key anchor institutions. The city’s infrastructure was expanded in 2005 to provide access to local businesses, and again in 2007 when the city began providing local access to a citywide Wi-Fi system at no cost to local residents.

Frustrated with substandard service from regional telecom monopolies, in 2014 city officials began seriously talking about building a citywide fiber network. By 2015, officials had begun gauging local interest and found that 85 percent of residents were frustrated with existing service, and overwhelmingly supported the city’s plan to build something better.

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That same year officials began network planning and studying other projects in earnest.

“Collectively we studied more than 2 dozen successful projects and 13 failed ones to learn from those experiences,” Dave Williams, Director of Technology Services for Ponca City said at the time. “We visited other cities that have implemented broadband solutions, read countless research articles detailing the challenges and rewards of such projects, and systematically took every aspect of this project apart and looked at it to develop a plan addressing all the potential problem areas the best we possibly could.”

‘Business is Booming’

Eight years later and those efforts are now paying off for Ponca City residents.