In Auction Default, Indiana ISP Hands Back Broadband Locations to FCC

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2, 2024 – A rural Indiana internet service provider is giving back hundreds of locations won in a federal broadband subsidy auction in 2020.

Daviess-Martin Rural Telephone Corp. in Montgomery, Indiana, said it was relinquishing 12 Census Block Groups with 635 locations that it had been assigned by the Federal Communications Commission after completion of a reverse auction in 2020.

"Unforeseen circumstances beyond RTC's control have made it unfeasible to deploy broadband to certain CBG locations much further away from the companies existing network," the company said in an Aug. 30 letter to an FCC bureau chief.

The 635 locations handed back to the FCC, however, represented about 46% of all locations that RTC won in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction, according to FCC records.

RTC CEO Kirk Lehman in the letter did not describe the "unforeseen circumstances," though he added the company was motivated to surrender the RDOF locations now "so that they may become eligible for NTIA’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program."