to urban America. Half a dozen years ago, the U.S. Congress allocated funds to the Federal Communications Commission to extend this service to less populated areas. Experts interviewed for this story said the large service providers, such as Verizon and AT&T, helped write the regulations and cherry-picked the funding, so the end result was an extension of coverage but still not to most of rural America. Cell towers were set up to cover the major roads throughout the country but not the communities that existed beyond the interstates. As a matter of fact, these are the communities where agricultural production is centered. One expert said the coverage maps often touted by these large providers in their advertising are a joke at best. Large swatches of America have little or no coverage. When the first round of funding didn’t solve the problem, the FCC launched Connect America Fund Phase II. Last year, the FCC conducted an auction (#903) allocating connectivity funding to underserved, and under-populated census blocks across the United States. Auction 903 ran from July 24 to August 21, 2018. More than 100 bidders won about $1.5 billion in funding spread out over 10 years to provide fixed broadband and voice services to more than 700,000 locations in 45 states. For the past few months, the administration of the program— including rules—have been developed and winning bidders are now starting to build-out the broadband systems. The regulations call for a tiered approach to development with benchmarks having to be met on a specific timeline for further funding to continue. For example, within the first three years, a successful bidder must have expanded broadband support to 40 percent of the locations within the bid’s service area. One such successful bidder is Commnet, which operates in
most western states and won bids for many different rural areas including some locations in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Michael Prior, CEO of ATN International, Commnet’s parent company, expects the build-outs to occur at a much more rapid pace than the six to 10 year timeline would indicate. “You are going to start to see major programs developed in the next six to nine months,” he told Western Grower & Shipper in early April. Prior said the program’s funding incentives are tied to completion of projects so companies like Commnet are going to move fast. He, in fact, is bullish on the potential success of this effort. He said there is no one solution as many different technological advances are in the works that will provide this coverage in even sparsely populated areas. Commnet, he said, has much experience bringing broadband to communities with as few as four to 10 people per square mile. Among the solutions being offered are point-to-point, line of sight connectivity. That is the solution being developed for Coalinga by Cal.net, a Northern California wireless provider that has 20 years of experience providing internet service to small towns and communities. Mark Herr said the company entered Auction 903 and was awarded many of the rural census blocks in the San Joaquin Valley stretching from Kern County to Redding. Herr explained that the firm will be erecting towers and using tall buildings to locate line-of-sight equipment that will send wireless signals directly to equipment on homes and businesses. Hard wiring will connect the equipment on the home to a router or similar equipment within the home. “If we can use existing buildings, that will speed up the process and allow us to provide broadband service quicker,” Herr said. He noted that the company’s field representatives are
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MAY | JUNE 2019
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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