Admittedly, I’m not exactly early with this news 0 but I had to look it up myself so I figured I’d share what I learned. The short burst – is that the doors are open for applying for the FCC Rural Broadband Experiments funding. According to Lexology…

On August 19, the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau released a public notice establishing the process for applying for support under the Rural Broadband Experiments program.  Applications under this program must be submitted via the FCC’s online auction system and will be due no later than 6 PM (EST) Tuesday, Oct. 14.

As described in our prior advisory, the Rural Broadband Experiments program will disburse up to  $100 million for competitive providers (such as competitive local exchange carriers, cable operators, fixed wireless ISPs or other entities) to deploy broadband networks in high-cost, unserved areas. The FCC implemented this program in its Technology Transitions Order in order to determine the most cost-effective way to direct support to competitors to deploy broadband infrastructure in unserved areas.  The results from these experiments are expected to guide the Commission as it begins to develop the competitive bidding process for directing Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II support to competitive providers.

A July FCC order set the budget for this program at $100 million, with $75 million reserved for projects that can offer 25 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream (category one); $15 million for projects offering 10/1 Mbps service (category two); and $10 million for projects in extremely high cost areas that would provide 10/1 Mbps service (category three).  In that order, the FCC determined that winning bids will be selected on a single criterion: cost-effectiveness.

You can check out the Lexology article for more details. Good luck!!