​On December 17, NRECA met with FCC staff in the Wireline Competition Bureau, Office of Economics and Analytics, and the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force to recommended they establish performance tiers and bidding rules to ensure that qualified bidders proposing the lowest weight, highest performance (and lowest latency) tier obtain funding to deploy and operate scalable, fiber-based networks capable of meeting the broadband service requirements within their authorized service areas for the full 10-year support term and beyond. An ex parte letter regarding this meeting was filed on December 19.