New Yorkers fret about getting left out of FCCs rural broadband funding

The FCC recently signed off on a plan to allocate up to $20.4 billion for rural broadband. However, New York is the only continental US state not eligible for the bulk of this funding. Not surprisingly, this is an issue raising concerns among New Yorkers and others. At issue is the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, created by the FCC in late January to bring "digital opportunity to Americans living on the wrong side of the digital divide." It earmarks up to $20.4 billion to pay telecom companies to extend Internet connections to around 6 million homes in the US that lack broadband services But New York isn't eligible for the initial $16 billion in RDOF funding. The FCC said this is because New York has already received federal funding for broadband deployment. This happened back in 2015, when Verizon declined a $170 million Connect America Fund award (the FCC's RDOF is based on its CAF program that was designed to provide government subsidies to telecom companies to build services in rural areas).