The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loosened its purse strings, allocating more than $1.2 billion to fund broadband deployments in rural and underserved areas across 32 states. 

It’s the largest funding round for rural broadband to date, according to the agency, and it reflects an acceleration of taxpayer money dedicated to improving the nation’s broadband infrastructure following last year’s passage of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. 

The landmark legislation included $65 billion in funding to help close the digital divide and deliver high-speed internet to many unconnected or underserved communities.

The latest tranche of funds brings the total amount allocated for new deployments to $4 billion, marking the sixth wave of this kind to date, according to the FCC. This phase will also bring broadband service to more than 1 million locations spread across 23 broadband providers selected as winning bidders by the FCC.

The authorization of $1.2 billion in funds “means more connectivity is coming to consumers, while we continue our commitment to make sure that funding goes to areas that truly need it,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement.

The broader $65 billion investment in broadband infrastructure could dramatically reshape America’s telecom market. Underserved communities that can’t access or can’t afford broadband are an obvious beneficiary.

Meanwhile, telecom network operators, equipment suppliers, vendors, and municipal entities are keen to see a pace of development and investment that could reshape their position for the next decade.

“For broadband service providers, funding shifts the return on investment assessment to include more areas where building broadband coverage to unserved or underserved areas makes sense from a bottom-line perspective,” Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, senior research director at Gartner, said leading up to the infrastructure bill’s passage.

Indeed, with $1.2 billion delivering broadband to 1 million locations, U.S. taxpayers are effectively paying $1,200 per connection up front. 

With an expansive geography pockmarked with extensive dead zones, including some of the most affluent parts of the country, the funding allocated by the infrastructure bill is expected to focus on these issues in a more comprehensive manner than existing federal programs, GlobalData Service Director John Byrne explained at the time.

“The funding will accelerate broadband deployment in underserved areas, and might even create meaningful competition in areas where one of the dominant players has a de facto monopoly,” he added. 

The FCC also announced a Rural Broadband Accountability Plan to improve the audit and verification processes. This includes a doubling of audits and verifications in 2022, compared to 2021, and the largest dollar recipients will be required to submit to an on-site audit in at least one state, according to the agency.

Results of these verifications and audits, speed and latency performance testing will also be made available online for public view for the first time. “These new measures will help ensure that the providers we fund in this program will do the job,” Rosenworcel said.