WTA Responds to LDT Broadband on Challenges of Serving Rural Areas

Today, WTA filed a letter with the FCC contesting LTD Broadband’s claim that “rural areas do not present the same challenges of deploying fiber [as many urban fiber deployments] because of the lack of in-ground infrastructure such as gas lines, electric lines and sewer lines that can complicate and add cost to fiber trenching.”

WTA’s letter asserts that this does not explain, much less demonstrate, how LTD will be able to construct and operate multiple new stand-alone Gigabit-speed fiber optic networks serving over a half million locations with RDOF support that is only 20-to-30 percent of the reserve prices established by the CACM developed by CostQuest Associates and the Commission. In addition, the distance between customers, the environmental, biological, and archeological impact studies, and the terrain and topography make rural areas much more expensive to serve than urban areas.