With close to 400 bidders in the RDOF auction, we will see not only new technology coming out, but we also have a new spectrum to go with it. Companies are bound to have channel sizes and a quiet portion of the spectrum to achieve the desired speeds quickly.

1. 4/9/24, 4:49 PM RDOF – Opportunity Missed Is Opportunity Lost - Techwave
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ENGINEERING
RDOF – OPPORTUNITY MISSED IS
OPPORTUNITY LOST
With close to 400 bidders in the RDOF auction, we will see not only new technology coming out,
but we also have a new spectrum to go with it. Companies are bound to have channel sizes and a
quiet portion of the spectrum to achieve the desired speeds quickly.
The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction is a critical step in the Federal
Communications Commission’s (FCC) ‘s efforts to close the digital divide across the United
States.
The FCC established the RDOF, which will provide up to $20.4 billion to connect millions of rural
homes and small businesses to high-speed broadband networks. The RDOF framework builds
upon the success of the 2018 Connect America fund phase two auction.
Most of the companies have gone through the process and figured out what kinds of
requirements the FCC will have for measuring and ensuring that companies are meeting the
speed goals necessary to drive RDOF offerings. Some of the firms dropped, saying that this is
pretty hard to do. It is hard to hit the speeds, and it’s hard to keep the speeds up. And this is an
end-to-end thing. It is not just the speed to the customer. But is there enough backhaul at a site?
Companies now believe that they can win the auction by committing to higher speeds than others,
because they get better bidding credits in the process.
But the critical factor here is that more people will bid gigabit than ever because that’s the only
way they can get their leg up in the bid to win. So, the big thing in all of the preparatory
architectural discussions for RDOF between companies and suppliers is, what do you have that
can get me a gigabit? And how am I going to make this work? What kind of oversubscription do I
need to be able to prove Speed tests, but how many people are on a base station? And what
variety of capacities at peak? There was a lot more work this time around that was not in play in
CAF Two. Firms are at that generational point where what kinds of technology are there that can
do gigabit?
And actually, the answer to that right now is nothing. There is almost nothing that can get the job
done. But looking to a bright future, 2021 already was on track for the gigabit tiers technologically.

2. 4/9/24, 4:49 PM RDOF – Opportunity Missed Is Opportunity Lost - Techwave
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And it’s no coincidence that people are, as a result of this, building another roadmap.
They are looking at the timeline and saying, okay, probably the second half of 2021 is the earliest
point when you start to see funds get put to use. And that’s in line now with going into early 2022.
And all of this technology should be available to hit those speeds. Getting 100 megabit to these
places is no longer an issue. That’s easy. Getting to a gigabit is a real challenge here.
In all, there are close to 400 bidders. That means what we will be seeing is not only new
technology coming out, but we also have a new spectrum to go with it. Companies are bound to
have channel sizes and a quiet portion of the spectrum to achieve those kinds of speeds quickly.
Clients are already using 1.75 gigabits, and if the requirement shoots up to 3.5, then one must be
using the six gigahertz spectrum to handle a large portion of customers, primarily in line of sight.
And then you’ve got to be able to bring to bear other spectrum and other tools when you have
customers houses that are behind the trees that don’t get or can’t see the tower.
But generally speaking, that 3.5 gigahertz band, especially the LTE 5g technologies, is much better
at making it through trees in particular. So we believe that it’s going to be this mix of getting as
many customers covered as possible with the high capacity six Ghz than five Ghz technology. Use
that cellular spectrum of 3.5 bands for knocking off the customers that need the most help from a
signal level perspective because of trees and other occlusions that might happen. So that’s the
broad guidance. We have to give people what we know. We can’t cure cancer with one answer
here, unfortunately. But we do have the technologies that can solve most of the problems.
Techwave & supporting RDOF
Techwave’s role in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction is to provide a clear
engineering field and design path throughout the deployment of rural networks backed by
technology-enabled competencies. We provide efficient and high-quality Field Surveying with best-
practice Engineering Design, resulting in significant improvements in time and cost savings
through quality enhancements.
Techwave has 16 years of experience with deep domain expertise in delivering Engineering
services for fixed and wireless network services. Our FTTx Engineering capabilities, geospatial
and telecom domain expertise, and on-shore and offshore global delivery models help customers
rapidly build next-gen networks. By delivering cost optimization in FTTx network planning and roll-
out, we can assist and add value where your market demands.
Techwave RDOF Services
Fielding / Design Engineering / Drafting
Field & Pole survey and audits

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Plan and Design: Greenfield / Brownfield for FTTx and HFC networks
MDU/ SFU/ MTU Design Engineering
As-builts/ Records
GIS Data translation, migration, conflation and audit
Field dispatch management
Feasibility / Serviceability check
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