After more than a year of waiting, Charter Communications finally received approval for the winning bids it placed in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction, as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced its largest authorization round to date. As the agency continues processing the applications of auction winners, it said it plans to implement several changes to its audit procedures.
Officials greenlighted a total of more than $1.2 billion in RDOF bids covering 32 states in the latest “ready to authorize” announcement. The majority of these belonged to Charter, though they were listed under various other names including Charter Fiberlink, Time Warner Cable Information Services and Bright House Networks Information Services. Bids for these entities covered all 24 states where Charter won support in the RDOF auction.
A Charter representative confirmed to Fierce the entities were its subsidiaries and said the authorizations appeared to cover all of its winning bids. The operator scored a total of $1.2 billion in support through the auction, but subsequently requested waivers for a few hundred thousand dollars worth of commitments.
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The announcement marked the FCC’s sixth RDOF funding wave. An FCC representative previously told Fierce the release of RDOF funds is a two-step process which includes a “ready to authorize” announcement and the subsequent authorization of those funds to winning bidders once specific financial documents have been submitted. Only five releases in the latter category have been issued thus far.
The agency has now approved more than $4 billion in support for winning bidders out of the $9.2 billion which was awarded at auction. Charter was one of the top ten winners in the RDOF auction, coming in second only to LTD Broadband.
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Out of the top ten, only Charter, Windstream and some members of the Rural Electric Cooperative Consortium have had winning bids approved in a “ready to authorize” notice. LTD Broadband, SpaceX’s Starlink, Nextlink, Frontier Communications, Resound Networks, Starry and Centurylink are still waiting.
In 2022, the FCC said it plans to make several changes to its audit and verification processes for winning bidders as part of what it called its Rural Broadband Accountability Plan. Specifically, it said it will double the number of audits and verifications conducted this year as opposed to last, with the largest dollar recipients subject to an on-site audit in at least one state and high-risk winners also facing additional scrutiny. It also said it plans to publicly post the results of its verifications, audits and performance testing on the Universal Service Administrative Company’s (USAC) website.