FCC ID's State-by-State Rural Broadband Fund Breakdown

The FCC has identified a state-by-state breakdown of where the six million homes are that it says would get subsidized broadband through the majority of the new, $20 billion, Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. 

California has the most with 421 locations, while Wyoming has the least with only 21. That makes sense since California is the nation's most populated state, and Wyoming its least. 

Specifically, the FCC has just released a list of how many locations in each state the FCC expects its new fund to reach with high-speed broadband. 

The FCC is voting at its Jan. 30 meeting on FCC chair Ajit Pai's proposal to create the fund. 

The fund will allocate broadband subsidies through a two-phase reverse auction, with phase one offering $16 billion over ten years for areas that are wholly unserved with high-speed broadband, as defined by the FCC and identified as unserved using current FCC data. Phase II money will go to partially-served areas--"areas where some households have access to such service but others do not"--as identified by the FCC's new and more granular Digital Opportunity Data Collection. Phase two money would also be available to areas not receiving winning bids in phase one.  

Below are the state-by-state breakdowns courtesy of the FCC: 

Source: FCC

Source: FCC
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.