From BroadbandCensus.com Weekly Report
WASHINGTON, May 25, 2009 – By June 30, the NTIA intends to hire an outside contractor to help administer its broadband grants program, release rules for $4.7 billion in grants, and issue two separate notices of funds availability.
Those details emerged from the quarterly report to Congress, dated May 18, that the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration released on either May 21 or May 22.
NTIA also said that it “anticipates making grant awards beginning in the final quarter of the calendar year 2009,” or potentially as soon as October 1. That date differed from what the White House’s
recovery.gov web site said.
[more...]
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Sunday, April 5th, 2009
By Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, April 5, 2009 - Proper oversight of the $7.2 billion Broadband Technology Opportunities Program can only take place if key terms are defined properly, a panel of agency officials and policy experts told a congressional committee on Thursday.
The broadband stimulus programs can succeed only if the eventual definition of "unserved areas" is "sensible," said Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet.
Boucher is concerned that areas that have a "smattering" of broadband service might be excluded from the definition of "unserved" areas. Agencies must also exercise care when defining what constitutes an "underserved" area in order to maximize market competition, Boucher said.
“Uunderserved" should also encompass areas with low available speeds, Boucher said.
But Boucher cautioned that the stimulus program should not be confused with a national broadband strategy, which the Federal Communications Commission is tasked with designing. The FCC is scheduled to take up the task at its April 8 meeting.
Such a strategy could include expanding universal service fund support to include broadband, he said, and indicated his subcommittee would continue to be "actively involved in looking at ways to achieve universal broadband deployment."
Ranking member...
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Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
News | NTIA-RUS Forum | Day 6, Session 1
By Jesse Masai, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, March 24, 2009 – At the final day of a six-day public forum about the federal government’s $7.2 billion broadband stimulus funding on Tuesday morning, the discussion made a sharp turn toward a focus on oversight and post-award compliance.
The forums, sponsored by the Commerce Department’s National Technology and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service, addressed the parameters of the program being put in place at the two agencies because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the fiscal stimulus package.
Beth McConnell, executive director of the Media and Democracy Coalition, a coalition of public interest media advocacy groups in the states and in Washington, said there was need to “ensure grantees are accountable to the congressional intent in the Recovery Act” and that “grantees are complying with the rules and agreements.”
“To address both, we need clear and concrete objectives in grant contracts, strong rules to hold them to, and good data to evaluate,” she said. Companies should not be able to evade these conditions by selling their contracts, she said.
Additionally, said McConnell, all funded projects should contain a component that will measurably increase adoption. She...
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Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
News | NTIA-RUS Forum | Day 1, Session 3
By Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, March 17, 2009 - Broadband adoption is widely viewed as spurring innovation, but $7.2 billion had stakeholders gathered at Monday’s public meeting on broadband funding to offer comments on what sort of "innovative programs" could make best use of the funding.
American Telemedicine Association CEO Jonathan Linkous said his organization was pleased that the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service were "taking the lead" on an issue he said had previously been spread between about a dozen federal agencies.
Telemedicine, which Linkous said could be "very broadly defined," has potential to expand broadband services not just among health care facilities, but to homes of unserved and underserved populations as well. With the fiscal stimulus legislation providing money not just for broadband, but specifically for telemedicine, Linkous predicted a boon for his industry.
Telemedicine is traditionally associated with applications like remote links between rural clinics and major medical centers. But Linkous suggested that broadband should be brought to the home to enable better in-home care as a growing elderly population "ages-in-place." That will require assistance that overwhelms current nursing facility capacity. "I...
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