Earlier this year Congress passed an Omnibus Budget bill that okayed the US budget until this September. Buried in that bill was $600 million for rural broadband expansion, to be administered by the USDA. The USDA has dressed this up as an ‘E-Connectivity pilot program’ and is asking current borrowers and others for feedback on how to use the money. Comments are due to them by September 10.

This new program will be allowed to supply grants for up to 85% of the cost of building in an area. That might create a viable business case in rural areas if the loan recipient only has to come up with 15% matching funds.

However, Congress made it challenging for the USDA to use the money. Normal USDA programs broadband loans can be used to cover areas where as few as 15% of the homes in the coverage area don’t have access today to 10/1 Mbps broadband. It looks like big ISP lobbyists got to the author of the bill and this new $600 million flips that around and can only be used in areas where 90% of homes don’t have access to 10/1 Mbps.

That’s a difficult hurdle to overcome for a number of reasons. First, the big cellular companies report widespread coverage of cellular broadband that meets that threshold. Many such areas don’t really have that speed, and in many cases can’t even get a cell signal, but the presumption will be that such areas can get broadband. Second, the big telcos are supposedly busy implementing the CAF II program which will bring 10/1 Mbps speeds to millions of rural homes. Those homes will be counted as having sufficient broadband.

The CAF II reverse auction is underway and it’s going to fund building in the most remote places that were not covered by the CAF II program. Most of the reverse auction census blocks will not pass the 90% no-broadband test.

In most places in the country it’s going to be challenging to draw a contiguous study area that meets the 90% test. It doesn’t take too many homes with good cellular broadband or with a CAF II upgrade to fail the eligibility test. I’m sure such areas exist, but almost by definition somebody is going to have to ask for funding for small pockets of homes, or else jerry-rig a service footprint to try to meet the 90% test.

I have a hard time even seeing the big incumbent telcos meeting the 90% test in many places. There might be small telcos that didn’t accept ACAM money that might still have such pockets – but most small telcos upgraded to speeds greater than 10.1 Mbps many years ago.

The USDA is asking for the following feedback:

• How to evaluate if rural homes have sufficient access to 10/1 Mbps speeds today. I think this gets at the heart of the FCC databases where homes are incorrectly shown to have broadband availability.
• How to consider affordability and pricing.
• How to demonstrate the benefits of projects using publicly available data.

The USDA didn’t ask about the speeds that must be provided to customers and I’d be surprised if they exceed the 10/1 Mbps speeds required by CAF II.

It’s possible I’m being pessimistic. It’s possible that this funding will make sense for building to small pockets of rural homes that meet the 90% no-broadband test. Perhaps the right strategy for an applicant is to apply for the funds for small clusters of ten or twenty homes – although that makes it hard to justify the overwhelming paperwork that must accompany a federal funding request.

Anybody that knows of areas that will meet this test ought to consider asking for the funds. I imagine the USDA will issue the rules near the end of this year. Getting what is effectively an 85% grant sounds attractive – but anybody who has asked for federal funding knows there will be nothing easy about the application process.