Where the Rubberized Meets the Street

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Stage I Auction Procedures Open public Notice, published on, may 19, 2020, requires successful RDOF bidders to perform a Long Form Program (FCC Form 683), which includes an in depth system and technology style plan. The plan is supposed to explain the way the design and systems that the successful bidder has selected will meet up with the relevant performance specifications they have guaranteed to make their bid, including info regarding quality, coverage, tone of voice service, network administration, and on-going operations.

If you’re an absolute bidder, the look plan you submit provides the FCC with a consider the background function you presumably did in preparing for placing your bid to begin with. But the function you’ve done to access this aspect is largely internal. The next phase shall deliver your programs, engineering, and operational ways of the federal government. It’s rather a tiny daunting prospect. Needless to say, you need not really disclose any confidential business secrets or commercial details in your submission, however the procedure will require an intensive analysis of one’s capacity to make great on the claims you manufactured in your bids.

As your engineering groups prepare to deploy the system in the communities where you’ve won bids, you may discover unforeseen requirements which were not regarded as a calculation on your own original bids. As a result, your final system plans can vary greatly from the originals somewhat. Now that you’ve already been declared successful, impacted communities might provide to greatly help or you may find out about existing technology infrastructure that you could leverage. These should all end up being reflected in your lengthy form application.

Your award amount won’t change, if your anticipated costs are significantly less than your original assessment actually, you have a chance through the lengthy form to communicate a (pretty much) final version of one’s plan with the FCC team that’s administering the funding to help with making it possible.

The Network Specifications

Your network style will have to describe the way you will deliver the functionality ranges you’ve guaranteed in your bid to at the very least 95% of the mandatory amount of locations in each condition by the finish of the six-year build-out period and throughout the 10-year assistance term, assuming a 70% subscription price by the ultimate service milestone.

Your Network Design

You’ve got a fair quantity of flexibility in your approach to delivering services. So when we’ve discussed above, so long as you follow the material ensures you manufactured in your bid and brief form, you may make adjustments to your network style program that depart from the program you manufactured in preparation for the bid. That said, and a network style diagram, your network strategy should include:

• center mile/backhaul topology, architecture, design, and technology
• interconnection architecture, style, and technologies treatment for connect to the web, including the likely providers, link data-rate/size, places, dual-homing, and multi-homing features
• the architecture which will be used to supply voice service, which includes whether these solutions will be supplied: 1) internally, 2) by way of a managed voice company, 3) by way of a voice outrageous services, or 4) through a different type of voice service
• the network’s scalability to aid customer growth and network information usage growth to take into account: 1) ever-increasing application requirements, 2) increasing quality needs, and 3) lower response/latency needs for ever-increasing using highly interactive applications
• the style and features that you intend to implement which will: improve reliability (such as for example redundancy) for equipment, hyperlinks, and software; dual-homing; and multi-homing connectivity
• network infrastructure ownership, including which right elements of the network, will use your or even another party’s existing and new system facilities, leased outlines, transit providers, and rented tower room for radios.
• technical information about the look methods, “guidelines,engineering and ” assumptions you utilized to size the capability of the network’s nodes or gateways, links, and wireless bottom stations
• plans to meet up peak period end-to-end overall performance requirements for the road from customer premises to the Web

Your network design program and an associated diagram would be the most scrutinized areas of your long-form app likely, also it shall inform subsequent components of that application, like the project plan, network administration strategy, and terrestrial and/or satellite technologies configurations.

Synergies Between your Long form as well as your Plans for System Buildout

The long-form is really a requirement to acquire federal RDOF funding, also it requires disclosure of an array of technical, operational, and financial data – a few of which you may be developing just for the objective of completing the form. But similarly to how the thousands of hours your engineers spent planning your bid strategy could be leveraged to see your long form software, the deep preparing and outreach you perform to finalize your lengthy form program can simplify another a decade of implementation.

Discover more about constructing more versatile and cost-efficient networks made to deliver rural broadband online connectivity in this Cisco webinar.