Archive for the ‘Stimulus’ Category

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Preparing a Small Business Wireless Internet Service Provider for Grant Writing

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Big businesses that depend on government money, such the phone company, have large and well paid staff to handle the quirks of government rules, changes, and deadlines — but small businesses do not.

Grant opportunities are all too often funded late, and the rules fixed close to the deadline for grant submission. This puts small business at a disadvantage. Yes, you have a few weeks to get the grant written, but you also have a small business to run, and unlike Verizon, you don’t have $400 per hour lawyers and accountants to do the work for you.

So it makes sense to prepare for the grant writing process before the rules are fixed.

(more…)

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Unemployment

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Here’s an excellent video showing the rate of increase of unemployment, and its spread by U.S. county.

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

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

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The Stimulus Is Meant To Change The ISP Business

Friday, April 9th, 2010

The stimulus won’t actually change the business of providing internet service, but it did demonstrate what the current administration would like ISPs to be doing. Those that got funded were, for the most part, already deeply involved in their community. Many projects were already in the planning stages or had even been partially implemented before they received stimulus funds.

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).

(more…)

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National Broadband Plan Tomorrow

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Here’s a draft executive summary.

Here’s a list of whom Forbes expects to win.

My comments, based on what we know at this time, are here.

Posted in Law, Stimulus, Telecommunications | Comments Closed

Spend Some of the Stimulus on Basic Infrastructure

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Today, a significant water line bursts on average every two minutes somewhere in the country, according to a New York Times analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.

I wish some of the stimulus went towards repairing basic infrastructure.

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Perfect the First Page of Your Application
— and reapply if you were rejected in round one

Monday, February 1st, 2010

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. (more…)

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RUS Prepares to Fund Satellite Projects

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

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.

(more…)

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RUS is More Flexible in Round Two

Monday, January 18th, 2010

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.”

(more…)

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Broadband Stimulus Round Two Starts This Week

Monday, January 18th, 2010

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.

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Tech Savvy Vermont Grades Applications

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

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. (more…)

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