More than 200 companies (220) have qualified to participate in the Connect America Fund II (CAF II) auction scheduled to begin in late July, including large incumbent carriers such as Verizon, Cox, Windstream, Frontier, Cincinnati Bell and Hawaiian Telcom and dozens of rural telcos.

Also qualifying as CAF II auction bidders are large and small cable companies, including Cox Communications and Altice, as well as satellite broadband providers Hughes Network Systems and Viasat, along with rural electric companies, WISPs, wireless companies such as U.S. Cellular and other types of companies.

On the qualified CAF II auction bidders list are dozens of companies whose applications initially were deemed “incomplete” by the FCC. As of mid-May, the commission had deemed only 47 applications to be complete, while 230 were incomplete. Those numbers now have essentially reversed, with only 57 applications ultimately deemed to be “not qualified to bid.”  

The CAF auction will award as much as $2 billion to cover some of the costs of deploying broadband to rural areas in up to 20 states where broadband meeting minimum service standards is not currently available. Funding will go to carriers that offer to provide service at the lowest level of support based on a weighting system that will favor bidders offering to provide higher-speed, lower-latency service.