Carriers Cite Permitting Problems and Federal Shutdown in Missing RDOF Deadline
Close to two dozen providers notified the FCC last week about possibly or actually having fallen short of Rural Deployment Opportunity Fund (RDOF) deployments that were to be completed by the end of 2025. Several said pole attachment and permitting woes were the hold-up or cited delays tied to the fall 2025 federal government shutdown and changes to the BEAD program. The RDOF notifications involved locations in at least 28 different states.
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Carriers that missed their RDOF deployment milestone -- which required them to serve 40% to 60% of locations -- had to notify the FCC by Thursday in docket 19-126.
Alabama's Pine Belt petitioned the agency to give carriers that received RDOF support in 2022 until Feb. 28 to meet the deployment milestone. Pine Belt, which received RDOF awards for 3,893 locations, said it was on the path to reaching the 40% milestone when the federal shutdown made it unable to get funds from a Department of Agriculture rural fiber construction loan. The company also had to deal with engineering changes and vendor delays beyond its control, it said. Pennsylvania's Centre WISP also blamed the federal shutdown for slowing down its close on a rural telecommunications construction loan from the USDA.
In notifying the FCC that it missed its RDOF milestone in Georgia and Florida, Mediacom asked for a waiver to use the broadband serviceable location fabric, which is more up to date than the Connect America cost model (CAM), to meet its 40% milestone, or for an extension until June 30. The company said it had designed its network based on a total count of CAM locations but had to redesign it when the FCC adopted a different methodology for verifying RDOF deployment. The broadband serviceable location fabric methodology showed that Mediacom was required to serve "substantially more locations" than anticipated, it said.
Uniti Services pointed to delays related to pole attachment and permitting in its failure to hit its milestone in nine states where it received RDOF locations. Formerly called Windstream Services, Uniti said that as of the end of 2025, it had about 1,600 outstanding permit applications that had been pending longer than 99 days. Those permits are necessary to serve some 86,000 locations across the company's 18-state RDOF footprint. About 200 of those permits, needed to serve about 10,000 locations, had been pending for more than a year. Vermont's NEK Community Broadband similarly said long lead times for pole attachments and permitting were partly why it's likely about five percentage points short of its 60% RDOF deployment milestone.
Texas-based Four States Fiber said labor and materials costs are a lot higher than initially anticipated, delaying its Arkansas RDOF deployment. It also cited delays in construction permits from the U.S. Forest Service, as well as the time and costs of getting railroad permits. In addition, Four States said it's having problems getting right-of-way permits for some parish roads in Louisiana.
Conexon Connect said it missed its 60% milestone in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Louisiana as it held off on RDOF work until BEAD decisions were finalized in 2025 by state broadband offices, since the company's network would need to be modified to account for any new BEAD-funded areas. "With clarity now on BEAD awards, Conexon Connect expects to resume aggressive network build activity by no later than 2Q 2026." It said it also missed RDOF milestones in Tennessee and Colorado, blaming the latter on BEAD as well.
Talkie Communications said it missed its 40% RDOF buildout in Delaware because of overbuilding concerns. The state handed "substantial" American Rescue Plan Act broadband funding awards to incumbent cable providers to support deployment in locations in Talkie's RDOF census block groups, the company said. It's now working with the FCC to identify currently or soon-to-be served locations and reduce its RDOF deployment obligations "so as to avoid overbuilding and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars." Talkie added that it hasn't been able to deploy fiber to its remaining RDOF areas because the construction is contingent on the FCC pinpointing allocations already served. "This has been a frustrating circumstance for Talkie." Separately, the provider said similar overbuilding concerns made it miss its Maryland milestone.
Cox Communications exceeded its fourth-year RDOF buildout obligations in six states but possibly fell short of the 60% milestone in California, Louisiana and Oklahoma, it said. The company noted that it plans to meet the milestone in California and Louisiana by mid-2026 through more residential fiber builds and the deployment of RDOF-compliant products, while in Oklahoma, it's working through data reconciliation issues with the locations there. Meanwhile, Consolidated Communications said it believes it met its 60% milestone for Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, but it's dealing with reporting challenges from the RDOF program's move from latitude/longitude-based location reporting to the use of Broadband Data Fabric IDs. Frontier Communications said it met its 40% RDOF milestone in the majority of its awarded states but likely missed in California, Illinois and New York, adding that it "intends to work diligently over the next months to resolve any shortfalls."
In addition, Oregon's Hyak said it's withdrawing from RDOF and defaulting on its award. Rising construction costs have "made it financially infeasible" for the company to fulfill its obligations.