The solution is obvious, build basic infrastructure (from roads to broadband to paying nurses’ salaries).

“We can’t say this enough,” writes David Isenberg.

An example is the OpenCape project, which I wrote about here. Planning for it began years ago. It involved local emergency services, educational instutions, and the local small business association.

ISPs should already be working these institutions (if they are reasonable as customers).

Here’s the list of what the stimulus defined as critical community institutions:

• Schools (K-12)

• Libraries

• Medical and Healthcare Providers

• Public Safety Entities

• Public Housing

• Institutions of Higher Education

• Community Support Organization

• Government Facilities

Serving any of these institutions can help an ISP obtain positive publicity and possibly also an anchor customer for the network. Each will have positives and negatives as a customer. There’s no need to serve everyone on this list, but as a member of your community, you’re likely to find at least one of them amenable and a useful partner.

Here’s a famous example in the WISP industry: Marlon Schafer’s police deployment.

First Step Internet won an award in round one (easygrants ID: 643). Here’s their about page. It’s a good example of how to be both businesslike and a good citizen as an ISP.

The goal of the stimulus (and, possibly, future FCC policy) was to make the ISP industry a local service provider. More than just a business, it too would become a critical community institution, an anchor for rural communities that are losing their working age population.

This is a possible future for the wireless ISPs. They could become local protected institutions with a mandate that exists for only as long as they serve and help their rural communities. It would be a local utility. It would be influenced by an idealization of the rural community that may never have existed in the past, but which could be a part of our connected future.

The most egregious might be Wi-Zee’s, which will “educate” consumers by delivering the company’s CPE to them, but the application was mostly redacted, a shocking violation of transparency.

I think Schwarzenegger did his state no favors by recommending such a large number of applications.

Meanwhile, this article updating the NTIA’s progress suggests that stimulus money should be allocated in November. I expect round 2 questions to start any day now.

The fact is that on both coasts there are large cities and also small towns that sit next to the fattest pipes in the world but which have no access to them. The stimulus should help change that.

When I saw his name on the list of stimulus applicants, I got back in touch.

The stimulus has allowed him to consider a rapid expansion, using the best available equipment, and working with neighboring ISPs in the NorCal Broadband Access Consortium, which he leads. The Consortium aims to provide WiMAX to rural California counties of Lake, Glenn, Colusa, Napa, and Solano. PNC applied for a $3,136,103 grant and a $2,568,883 loan. The Consortium applied for about $200 million, Tenenbaum said.

Here’s how.

Building a consortium

When did you first hear about the stimulus? “I first heard about it when Obama was running for office. I knew this was coming but couldn’t do much before the NOFA (notice of funds available).”

Tenenbaum started gathering his team a few months before the NOFA, finalized the group two weeks before it, and started work on the grant the instant it was issued.

“I’m surprised how few WISPs applied,” he said.

But Tenenbaum admitted that the application can seem daunting.

It requires the technical expertise that WISPs already have plus people able to map the coverage area, build a budget, ensure compliance with the NOFA, and more.

One unexpected but key job is that of community builder. Tenenbaum said he had one person calling key organizations, what the NOFA and the recovery act (ARRA) call “anchor institutions” to get them involved. He said the Consortium filed over 50 letters of support from sheriffs, fire departments, and other anchor institutions.

The community builder position was a full time job.

For mapping, the Consortium worked with CSU, Chico, also known as Chico State University. This has been a headache for many WISPs and grant writers. Many offer services for a fee.

Brian Webster of Brian Webster Consulting can do a map for an application. I spoke to him in February about his business.

The WiNOG cooperative can also do mapping (and can do an entire WISP grant application).

For accounting, PNC.net used its accountant, a retired man the company found through the university’s Center for Economic Development, who has been excellent for PNC and for the grant. “My advice to WISPs is to find a worthy CPA like ours that is willing to adopt the company,” said Tenenbaum. “Why adopt? Because you can never pay someone like that what they are worth.”

He added that because PNC’s accounts are so thorough, the company usually files its tax returns in January.

Even with the team ready to go on day one, the application took eight weeks. The team read and re-read the NOFA guidelines and gathered all the information required. The team submitted a version by postal mail on the initial deadline, and followed up with an electronic submission when the deadline was extended by a week.

“I am lucky to have such a great team, both the field and the grant teams. Without such a great field team I would have not been able to disconnect and focus on the grant, and without such a super grant team, I would have not been able to submit a quality application on time and by the guidelines,” Tenenbaum said.

Questions about WiMAX

The Consortium is testing the various providers. Tenenbaum noted that once you choose a WiMAX vendor, you’re locked in.

The deployment will use the 3.65 GHz spectrum. Will it be by the book? “What book? There is no book. We will use strong point to point (PtP) solutions. It will be a better system than what we would build without the stimulus. In the past, we did everything on a shoestring with scarce resources.”

In a rural area such as that covered by the Consortium, noise is not a major issue. The system does have to perform as expected, hence the testing.

Any advice for WISPs considering applying for stimulus money in round 2? “Start now. There’s so much to do. We had a spreadsheet that divided the NOFA into what seemed like 100 assignments and we had to track the daily completion percentage for the tasks.”

More recently, Brodsky claimed that bids were rigged in Connected Nation’s favor in the state of Florida, arguing that there was no other explanation why the highest bidder won a broadband mapping contract.

Maps are important. They show where the government should invest money. They say who has broadband and who does not. If the maps are drawn by the phone companies, they could direct stimulus money only to the areas they don’t care about, bypassing wealthy areas they would like to deliver service to but have not yet built out.

Today, NYPIRG is calling out such policies. In its report (available in .pdf format here), NYPIRG says, “Contracts or grants to map data … must include requirements
that the mapping entity disclose any financial or other relationships to broadband providers. If data are self reported by a broadband provider and not independently verified, that should be disclosed and the data should not be considered accurate until independently verified.”

The report does not specifically name Connected Nation, but readers understand that’s the problem that’s addressed by this recommendation — a recommendation that is so obvious that it should not have to be said.

The report contains a massive number of other good ideas, endorsing structural separation, better data collection, an internet literacy curriculum and more.

NYPIRG’s report is a masterpiece.

Satellite broadband is a special case. Although it can reach virtually anywhere in the U.S. — to any place from which you can see the Southern sky — it has unique flaws.

Satellite signals are transmitted over a sufficiently long distance to introduce latency, a delay of almost a full second that can degrade or even break some applications — especially those employing voice.

I don’t believe that 10 percent of the stimulus should be spent on delivering this lower quality service. Instead, I hope that the stimulus will be spent on delivering the same quality of service to rural areas that is currently enjoyed in wealthy areas of the United States.

I do see a limited use for satellite. There is an application from Motorbrain Consulting, Inc. of Lincoln, Maine, to deliver satellite service to 3,400 homes that have no other option, free to the customer, for 2 years, at a cost of $ 5,571,784. That’s less than $100 per home per month, and seems reasonable.

The state of Maine is mountainous and heavily forested, making it difficult (but not impossible) to bring wireless or fiber service to many homes. I think that Motorbrain’s application has merit.

Parts of some applications have been redacted. For example, parts of the executive summary of a $150 million + proposal from Hughes Network Systems, available here in .pdf format, are blacked out.

This appears to violate the promised accountability and tranparency of the stimulus.

I am looking into this and am eager for comments and links.