The FCC misses no opportunity to talk about how much they support rural broadband, so hopefully they will take advantage of an opportunity to open up a lot of new fiber in rural America. The FCC is going to fund $9 billion for the 5G Fund later this year that is intended to bring better cell phone coverage to rural areas. That funding will go to cellular carriers.

A lot of the 5G Fund is going to be used to build fiber to rural cell towers and the FCC should make any such middle-mile fiber available to others at affordable rates. One of the biggest impediments to building last-mile networks in remote areas is still the absence of fiber backhaul. If the FCC is going to pay to run fiber to rural areas, then it only makes sense they would make such fiber available to last-mile ISPs.

The big cellular carriers will say that this is a burden they don’t want to bear, but that is bosh. Big companies like Verizon and AT&T are already are among the largest seller of fiber transport in the country, so they have everything needed to sell transport on these new fiber routes. The cellular companies will already be obligated to maintain the new fiber routes, so carrying additional traffic in the fibers doesn’t increase ongoing costs. Since the fiber will be free to the cellular carriers, the transport rates ought to be set low – any revenue derived on these fibers would still be pure gravy for the cellular companies

There will be smaller cellular carriers in the auction, and I would expect most of them to already be planning on selling transport on any new fiber routes. But not all of the smaller carriers will do so, so the FCC should make this mandatory – as they should for any middle-mile fiber route funded by the federal coffers.

States should also adopt this same policy. I’ve seen state grants go towards middle-mile fiber that was not made available to other carriers at affordable rates. Middle-mile fiber subsidized by the government should always be made available to others, and at subsidized rates that recognize the government contribution towards paying for the fiber.

I don’t think the same thing should be true for last-mile fiber. Most grant funding today is being used to build last-mile fiber in areas of low density. Even with grant funding, many of these last-mile projects barely pay for themselves. It would make no sense to allow competitors into last-mile fiber, because doing so might bankrupt the ISP that won the grant to build to a remote area.

The FCC mandated the sharing of middle-mile fiber built with the stimulus grants fifteen years ago. Many of those middle-mile networks have been leveraged to enable last-mile broadband projects that might otherwise never have materialized. But there are middle-mile projects from that program that didn’t follow the rules, like the middle middle-mile network in West Virginia that was basically handed to Frontier to use and charge as they wish.

The big carriers have a poor record of sharing fiber with competitors. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 mandated that the big telcos make excess dark fiber available to others with rates set at incremental cost. While some persistent ISPs have been able to lease dark fiber under those rules, the big telcos have worked hard to make it too difficult for somebody to buy. The telcos have also convinced the FCC over the years to change the rules to make it harder to buy dark fiber.

If this new batch of fiber is made available to others there must be rules. Without guidelines, the big telcos will declare that they need all of the fiber strands being built, even if they only use two fiber out of a 24-fiber. The FCC rules should include guidelines for setting a reasonable number of spare and reserve fibers.

The rules for the 5G fund have not yet been finalized, and hopefully, the FCC will do the right thing. These new fiber routes are going to some of the most remote places in the country and not all middle-mile routes will be of any use to others. Even if only one out of ten of the fiber routes built with the 5G Fund is used to create last-mile networks, the 5G Fund will have accomplished more than just improving rural cellular coverage.