Rural Wireless Carriers Ask FCC to Verify Coverage Data Before 5G Fund

WASHINGTON, August 28, 2024 – Rural wireless carriers want the Federal Communications Commission to do its own testing of mobile coverage in rural parts of the country before green-lighting a $9 billion program aimed at expanding mobile wireless access.

The 5G Fund for Rural America has been in limbo since 2020, but the FCC took comment on some procedural updates last year and commissioners have been  reviewing a draft implementation order since March. The FCC’s plan is to conduct a reverse auction in which providers bid to provide 5G service with the lowest amount of subsidy support.

The Rural Wireless Association wrote to the FCC Monday that improved agency broadband maps still overstate the 5G coverage for major wireless providers, and the process for challenging mobile coverage data was more difficult than that for fixed broadband data. It’s one of several concerns the group and others have raised throughout the agency’s 5G fund proceeding and continue to flag.

“[T]he issues with the mobile challenge process, to date, have effectively barred rural carriers from submitting any cognizable bulk mobile challenge data due to the FCC portal not successfully accepting mobile bulk challenges,” RWA lawyers Carri Bennet and Stephen Sharbaugh wrote.

For the FCC's part, the agency launched a speed test app this summer to crowdsource mobile coverage data and improve its maps.

RWA wants the agency to spend some of the 5G Fund’s planned $9 billion allocation on its own drive-testing of rural coverage through a third-party vendor. It also suggested using Postal Service vehicles and school buses to collect some of that data.

“This would negate the need for a challenge process and be more efficient by allowing carriers to use the money that would otherwise be used for challenges to fund further buildout of 5G,” the group wrote.

The group said the agency should use in-vehicle coverage data (opposed to data that assumes a stationary, outdoor user) to determine eligibility. As Cloudflare’s Mike Conlow noted in a recent newsletter, that would make the highest number of locations eligible based on current FCC data. CTIA, which represents large 5G carriers, has pushed for the more conservative outdoor stationary model. 

Some broadband providers have asked the FCC to hold off even longer on starting up the fund, with INCOMPAS and ACA Connects pushing the agency to wait years until the Biden administration’s $42.5 billion broadband expansion program is fully built out. Wireless companies have asked for at least the chance to provide input on the current draft order – still not published – before its adoption.