Here are all the winners of the FCC’s $9.2 billion RDOF auction

LTD Broadband, Charter, SpaceX, Windstream, Frontier, Starry and CenturyLink are among the big winners of the FCC’s recent Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Phase I auction.

The top 10 RDOF winners are listed below and Light Reading has provided the identity of the company involved and the technology or technologies that those firms said they will use to provide Internet services. The rest of the RDOF winners list is available on page 2 of this article.

The auction ended last week, and the FCC released the identity of the winners Monday. The agency said the auction ended at $9.2 billion, money that will go toward providing over 5.2 million unserved homes and businesses around the country with Internet connections.

The FCC noted that cable operators, electric cooperatives, incumbent telephone companies, satellite companies and fixed wireless providers were among the winners. Indeed, companies ranging from Verizon to Rise Broadband registered to participate in the event.

The FCC’s RDOF program is a reverse auction where companies and entities that submit the lowest bid for covering a particular area win – however, then they’re on the hook to cover that area with broadband services. Winning bidders will receive 10 years of subsidy payments from the FCC, disbursed in equal monthly installments, and have six years to deploy broadband to winning locations.

Interestingly, the biggest winners of the RDOF auction include a wide range of companies – from massive, incumbent network operators to tiny startups – that are planning to use all sorts of technologies to deliver Internet services to rural areas.

To read the complete article, visit Light Reading.