Broadband Stymied

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: March 12, 2010 5:35:05 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Broadband Stymied

Broadband Stymied
By Tom Evslin
<http://blog.tomevslin.com/2010/02/broadband-stymied.html>

Unfortunately, no matter what else the stimulus bill may or may not have done, it's slowed down the rate of broadband 
deployment in the US over the last year. The Rural Utility Service (part of the US Agriculture Department) and NTIA 
(part of the US Commerce Department) have awarded only 15% of the first round money they promised to make available. To 
be blunt, they failed in their mission. They are now poised to compound that failure with an absurd deadline of March 
15 for second round applications prior to availability of first round results.

Telecom providers and community projects alike concentrated on their stimulus applications from passage of the American 
Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) in February of 2009 until the application deadline in midAugust of last year. 
Money was (and is) hard to get, so looking for a share of the promised $7.2 billion of ARRA money seemed like a good 
idea even though the odds were long. According to NTIA, there were $19 billion in requests for the $1.2 billion they 
intended to make available in the first round. RUS says that they had $28 billion in requests for $2.5 billion in 
grants and loans. Even with some applications being to both NTIA and RUS, the odds were at least ten to one against any 
individual applicant!

The grants were supposed to be announced in October; everyone waited. The first announcements were made in December. A 
few more have dribbled out since. So far the agencies have announced awards for only about 15% of the money they said 
they would make available in round one. Doing the math, the odds go to a staggering seventy to one against getting 
funded (so far) in round one. Probably not many applicants would have spent the money they did on applications or 
waited so long to move ahead if they'd known how long it would take for so little to be given out.

But it gets worse.

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