Grant Writer and Internet Commentator Currently Focusing on the Broadband Stimulus
(h/t Karl Bode’s twitter feed)
“Of course the lesson learned is that in the Internet age, the harder a company works to stifle criticism, the more attention that criticism gets. The better path is perhaps to listen to what your customers are saying about your business practices, and change them where possible if you value your customers,” Bode writes.
The legal documents are here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/23/magicjack-legal-docu.html
Feld warns that the telcos are really attacking a still-unpublished National Broadband Agenda.
The executive summary of your broadband stimulus application is very important. In Denver, speakers said that some applications were rejected instantly because of poorly written executive summaries.
The best applicants are proud of their executive summaries. Victoria Proffer of St. Louis, Mo.-based ShowMe Broadband said in a press release that she was pleased that the government decided to post her entire executive summary. You can read her company’s executive summary here. As you can see, it clearly describes the history of the company and the purpose of the stimulus application.
At WiNOG, we help you write the summary — and help prepare the numbers too. Continue reading ‘Perfect the First Page of Your Application
– and reapply if you were rejected in round one’ »
The RUS has decided that, in round 2, there will be a specific and clearly defined role for satellite internet service providers.
Satellite service grants will be accepted for specific areas (the map showing those areas has not yet been published).
Satellite service is designed for those areas where wireline and wireless won’t work, where either would cost over $10,000 per home connected.
Continue reading ‘RUS Prepares to Fund Satellite Projects’ »
More areas will be eligible for stimulus grants, as the RUS addresses a complaint made by several people including the influential Rick Boucher (D-VA).
The definition of broadband is 768 / 200 Kbps but there is also a definition of high speed, which is 5 Mbps symmetrical. Any area without high speed service can be underserved, which opens up a large portion of the country to grants. “RUS has determined that rural areas without service at 5 Mbps (upstream and downstream combined) lack high speed broadband service sufficient to facilitate rural economic development as required by the Recovery Act,” the notice said.
Furthermore, the language that Boucher complained about, which said that underserved areas had to be a certain number of miles from an urban area, is also not present.
Instead, the RUS now defines a rural area as “any area, as confirmed by the latest decennial census of the Bureau of the Census, which is not located within: (1) a city, town, or incorporated area that has a population of greater than 20,000 inhabitants; or (2) an urbanized area contiguous and adjacent to a city or town that has a population of greater than 50,000 inhabitants. For purposes of the definition of rural area, an urbanized area means a densely populated territory as defined in the latest decennial census of the Bureau of the Census.”
Round two of the broadband stimulus was announced on Friday and will be written into the Federal Register this week. The Federal Register will be the official notice, if there are any discrepancies between what was published on Friday on the Broadband USA website and what will be published this week.
Applications are accepted from February 16, 2010 through March 15, 2010.
Round two will have only one step (not two), which sounds great, but it means that the environmental portion of the application that was not due with the initial application in round one will be due at the deadline this time.
The two organizations (the NTIA of the Commerce Department and the RUS of the Department of Agriculture) are dividing up the tasks — RUS will handle last mile applications and NTIA will handle middle mile applications.
MagicJack support failed. Here is a chat log representing three hours of script. The real problem is that the latest software update caused terminal problems. Don’t buy MagicJack.
Tech support is useless.
When I last wrote about MagicJack, I was very upset with the service. It was not working.
Imagine my surprise — and pleasure — when MagicJack called me to discuss the problem. After some back and forth, the MagicJack representative recommend that I purchase a powered USB hub. Continue reading ‘MagicJack Keeps Improving’ »
I edited this screed by Bruce Kushnick: The History, Financial Commitments and Outcomes of Fiber Optic Broadband Deployment in America: 1990-2004. In it, Kushnick details all of the promises the phone companies made to state and federal governments and regulators — and then broke.
I don’t agree completely with the internet plan of Vermont Governor Douglas (R) but even in this advanced day, he deserves credit for having a clear and ambitious vision for the future of the internet in the state of Vermont.
It is therefore no surprise that he took the task of ranking applications to heart and provided a clear, detailed letter (here in .pdf format from the Baller Herbst website) that ranked the various applications involving the state of Vermont.
He chose Vermont CTO Tom Evslin (blog here) to head the stimulus effort of the state of Vermont — a higher profile person than that heading the stimulus effort in many much larger states. Continue reading ‘Tech Savvy Vermont Grades Applications’ »