FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel recently announced a proposal to finally launch the 5G Fund that would be used to build rural cell sites. This is an idea that has been around for a while.

The FCC originally planned to award $4.5 billion for this same purpose in 2019 under the name of Mobility Fund II. As the FCC prepared for that reverse auction, it asked cellular carriers for maps showing existing cellular coverage. It turns out that the maps provided by Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular badly overstated cellular coverage, and smaller cellular carriers cried foul – since the maps would have excluded funding in the areas they serve. The FCC eventually agreed with the small carriers and canceled the auction. In April 2020, the idea was resurrected by Chairman Ajit Pai and was augmented by an additional $4.5 billion and retitled as the 5G Fund.

The original plans were delayed due to faulty maps provided by cellular carriers. The FCC now requires cellular carriers to report coverage using the same FCC maps used to report broadband coverage. If you go to that map you’ll see that there is a tab for mobile broadband as well as the one showing fixed broadband. I invite rural folks to go to the map and look at your address.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the FCC considers a place to be served if cellular data speeds are at least 7/1 Mbps. That’s a ludicrous definition of adequate cell coverage. The second thing you’ll probably notice, depending on where you live, is that the cellular carriers probably consider your area to be served. I live in Western North Carolina, and rural cellular coverage here is terrible in many places – like is true for most of rural America. Unfortunately, the current FCC map shows this region to be largely covered with cellular broadband.

I don’t think many folks have spent time looking at this map, but they hopefully will now that this plan has been announced. If your area is considered to be served on the FCC maps, it probably will not be eligible for new cell towers.

The FCC will likely wait until BEAD funds have been allocated to hold the reverse auction. This will allow anybody bidding on placing a tower to know if an ISP is pledged to bring fiber to the area before bidding. It makes little sense to build new towers that don’t have fiber backhaul.

The one thing to note about this fund – like the RDOF program, this not a grant but a subsidy program. That makes me wonder how carriers will justify operating extremely rural cell towers at the end of the subsidy period in places where there aren’t enough people and revenue to justify maintaining and upgrading cell sites when they inevitably wear out.

This is one case where a reverse auction probably makes sense. The FCC will likely publish a list of areas that need cellular coverage, and whoever bids the least will be obligated to build the needed cell sites. I hope the FCC doesn’t repeat one of the biggest errors of RDOF that gave winners six years to build the infrastructure to fulfill their obligation.

I also hope the FCC will be a lot more careful about who it lets participate in the auction. It would probably be good to limit the bids to those with cellular licenses and perhaps to local governments that are willing to invest in towers. The auction should not be open to speculators or those who are not in the cellular business today – to avoid some of the disasters of RDOF that gave big awards to companies without the financial or technical wherewithal to carry through on the winning bids.

There is no doubt that rural America is plagued by poor cell coverage. It’s a shame that the current FCC maps don’t show the real nature of rural cellular coverage. I think that in the last ten counties I’ve worked with, citizens in nine of them said that poor cell coverage was as big of a concern to them as poor broadband.