The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund is the Commission’s next step in bridging the digital divide.  On August 1, 2019, the Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposing to establish the $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to bring high speed fixed broadband service to rural homes and small businesses that lack it.  On January 30, 2020, the Commission adopted the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Report and Order, which establishes the framework for the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, building on the success of the CAF Phase II auction by using reverse auctions in two phases.  The Phase I auction, which began on October 29, 2020, and ended on November 25, 2020, awarded support to bring broadband to over five million homes and businesses in census blocks that were entirely unserved by voice and broadband with download speeds of at least 25 Mbps.  Phase II will cover locations in census blocks that are partially served, as well as locations not funded in Phase I.  The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund will ensure that networks stand the test of time by prioritizing higher network speeds and lower latency, so that those benefitting from these networks will be able to use tomorrow’s Internet applications as well as today’s.

For additional details, please refer to the Fact Sheet.

Final List of Eligible Areas — October 8, 2020

• Census Blocks, Associated Census Block Groups, and Reserve Prices (zip)
• Map
  • Census Block Groups Google Earth KMZ (zip ~420 MB)
  • Census Block Groups Shapefile (zip ~525 MB)
  • Census Block Groups Open Source GeoPackage (zip ~525 MB)
  • Partially Eligible Blocks Shapefile (zip ~36 MB)
  • Partially Eligible Blocks GeoPackage (zip ~37 MB)

Updated List of Eligible Areas — June 25, 2020

• Census Blocks, Associated Census Block Groups, and Reserve Prices (zip)
• Map
  • Census Block Groups Shapefile (zip ~510 MB)
  • Census Block Groups Google Earth KMZ (zip ~390 MB)

Preliminary List of Eligible Areas — March 17, 2020

• Census Blocks, Associated Census Block Groups, and Reserve Prices (zip)
• Census Blocks, Associated Census Tracts, and Reserve Prices (zip)
• Initially Eligible Locations – Selected State Summary (pdf)
• Map
  • Shapefile: Census Block Groups (zip ~553 MB)
  • Shapefile: Census Tracts (zip ~530 MB)
  • Shapefile: Partially Eligible Blocks (zip ~40 MB)

Contact

Please email questions to auction904@fcc.gov.