This RFP will accept Proposals of PBPs as well as non PBPs for Unserved and Underserved locations, but will prioritize PBP for awards. Following the IP-approved criteria, the Corporation has designed PAUs as shown in Appendix B, which are contiguous, indivisible geographic units of Unserved and Underserved BSLs as well as Underserved CAIs. The PAUs are identified in Appendix B. The identified PAU(s) that consist of CAIs will be evaluated in the same way as the other PAUs, except they will need to be served with symmetrical gigabit service Based on the PAUs listed in Appendix B, Proposers will identify PAUs that the Proposer plans to serve together using related infrastructure and operations. The Corporation will allow proposers to exclude select BSLs or CAIs that the applicant determines are excessively high-cost locations (or would otherwise make the project not economically viable for the technology being used) from a given PAU. Any exclusions of BSLs or CAIs should be clearly identified in by the Proposer in their proposal. For any such eliminated BSL or CAI, the Corporation encourages Proposers to propose a multi-provider solution, instead of self-performing. The Project must be designed to deliver, upon project completion, service that reliably meets or exceeds download speeds of 100 Mbps, upload speeds of 20 Mbps, and latency of less than 100 Milliseconds. The deployment must be completed and services must be available within four (4) years of grant award, which is considered the Period of Performance or the Deployment Period.4
