Archive for the ‘Stimulus’ Category

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Open Cape Shows What The Stimulus Should Be

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

The OpenCape project has applied for $32 million in funds, with an $8 million match, for a $40 million project to bring reliable service to Cape Cod in Massachusetts through a fiber-based middle mile project with microwave for backup and also for public safety.

Too many people assume that the place is wealthy and well-served, Art Gaylord, vice chairman of the project and director of information services at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told me. “The Cape suffers from the impression that it’s the summer playground for the rich and that it’s full of tourists with money. The reality is that although those people do come out here, there’s also a year round population of about 250,000 (it rises to three or four times that in the summer).”

The project got its start about three years ago when a tree branch took out phone service on a large portion of the Cape, including 911 service, Gaylord said. The community already had concerns about the reliability and price of phone and internet service.

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Why Aren’t More Fiber Landings Cracking Open the Fiber?

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Why aren’t more cities with fiber landings trying to access the fiber that passes through their land? As far as I know, there’s only one city doing this, its application brought to my attention by the Stimulating Broadband blog. Here’s their article.

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.

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First Stimulus Cash Awarded

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Great news from D.C.: the government is doing the right thing with broadband mapping.

The grants announced today go to entities in four states, California, Indiana, Vermont, and North Carolina.

The NTIA said that each of the successful applications showed that the state and the agencies were working together, were going to provide verifiable data and not just rely on the telcos for self-reporting, and had resources equal to one-quarter of the grant money received, in an 80/20 grant/cash match.

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Blogging The Stimulus:
Ofer Tenenbaum and a WISP Consortium

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

I first wrote about Ofer Tenenbaum’s WISP, PNC.net, late last year. At the time, the company had 500 customers, was growing fast, and was profitable.

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.

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Next Steps in the Stimulus

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Anna Gomez, NTIA deputy administrator and deputy assistant secretary for communications and information, provided an important update in the stimulus schedule at a PCIA Wireless Infrastructure keynote, according to Fierce Wireless.

She said that grants for round one should be awarded in November, rules changed shortly after, and the new applications will be received by “late winter” which could be as late as February.

However, the best applications will be those that are ready early, so I recommend that anyone who wants to work on round two start collecting the data they need and making plans right now.

In addition, it’s still unclear as to whether there will be two rounds or three rounds in the stimulus.

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NYPIRG Demands Accountability in Stimulus Mapping

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Art Brodsky at Public Knowledge first sounded the alarm about Connected Nation at the start of 2009, saying the organization was connected to Kentucky’s Republican governor and to telephone company lobbyists, enabling it to charge the state $400,000 and then make the state do the work.

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.

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Hughes Applies for $650 Million

Friday, September 18th, 2009

In three applications, satellite provider Hughes Network Systems has applied for about $650 million to serve “all rural and rural remote unserved and underserved areas in the U.S.”

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.

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Some Broadband Stimulus Information Redacted

Friday, September 18th, 2009

The Stimulus grant requests are in, and a complete listing is available here.

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.

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