Congratulations to the Rural Electric Cooperative Consortium (RECC) for achieving a critical milestone in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) process and taking one more step to close the Digital Divide!
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has deemed the RECC’s RDOF Phase I Short-Form Application “complete” – the only electric cooperative consortium application considered complete, and one of only 121 “complete” applications out of the 500+ submissions. The “complete”* designation means the RECC has met the FCC’s certification and information requirements, becoming the first electric cooperative consortium determined financially and operationally qualified to participate in the Phase I auction.
The auction, scheduled for October, will award up to $16 billion for providers to deliver broadband in rural communities. Applicants who submitted “incomplete”** applications – not meeting the FCC’s bidding qualification requirements – have until Sept. 23 to correct the deficiencies in their applications and the final number of auction bidders could number over 500 . The RECC is the largest electric cooperative consortium participating. In 2018, the RECC was awarded more than $186 million in the Connect America Fund (CAF) II auction, making it the largest, most successful bidding consortium in FCC history.
* FCC public notice : “Designation of an application as complete indicates that the applicant has provided the certifications and basic information concerning its qualifications that are required by the Commission’s competitive bidding rules and has been determined to be financially and operationally qualified to participate in the auction.”
** FCC public notice: “Each of these applications does not provide the certifications and basic information required by the Commission’s competitive bidding rules for participation in the auction, and/or the applicant has not been determined to be financially and/or operationally qualified to bid in all the states or for all the performance tier and latency combinations it selected.”
