Monday, November 9th, 2009
By Rahul Gaitonde, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, November 9, 2009 - On Friday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced seven new state recipients of the state broadband data and development grant program. These grants fund state efforts to map broadband availability and speeds. Each state was asked to pick a designated entity – either a state body or a non-profit organization – that would develop a plan for how broadband mapping would be conducted.
Of the seven states awarded grants on Friday, two choose to fully internalize their process and have state agencies control the mapping.
In Alabama, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs was tasked; they received $1.4 million for broadband data collection and mapping activities and $463,000 for broadband planning activities both for over a two- year period.
In Washington State, the Department of Information Services received $1.7 million for data collection and mapping and almost $500,000 for broadband planning activities both for over a two-year period.
Wyoming and Idaho, by contrast, choose to contract their mapping to the Puget Sound Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology, a Seattle based non-profit. Wyoming received $1.3 million for data collection and mapping over a two-year period and $500,000 for broadband planning activities...
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Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
By Paul Kapustka, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com
ASHBURN, Va., April 28, 2009 - Looks like rural WiMax provider
DigitalBridge Communications has found some new friends in the rural telco business, judging by a couple of announcements today from both Digital Bridge and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC), which represents some 1,400 rural electric and telephone utilities across 48 states.
The twin announcements - an unspecified amount of
funding by NRTC into DigitalBridge, and an agreement under which DigitalBridge will participate in
WiMax rollouts by NRTC members - seem squarely focused on helping rural operations get so-called "shovel-ready" projects in line to grab some of the
$7.2 billion in rural broadband stimulus funds that the government will spend by September 2010.
As we dig for more information, two things jump out of these agreements: One, that DigitalBridge could secure any further funding at all in the current economy speaks volumes of the investors' confidence that
WiMax is a technology worth betting on. And two, by joining forces with the NRTC, DigitalBridge becomes a trusted supplier to all those rural telcos who might be applying for the stimulus funds -- gaining the kind of access and marketing reach that a...
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