Maine governor John Baldacci (D) did an excellent job on his letter (available on Baller Herbst here) to the NTIA regarding stimulus fund applications. His office is recommending projects costing only $42 million, a very reasonable amount of money compared to most other states’ recommendations. He even recommended that the NTIA not fund some projects and clearly described how the state lacked data to judge some other projects.
All of this is excellent work, work that some governors have chosen not to undertake.
The governor recommended four infrastructure projects from two radically different providers. Frontirr Communications is the state’s ILEC after purchsing the copper lines from Verizon, but the company faces numerous challenges as detailed in its most recent SEC filing.
The other two projects from from GWI, an independent ISP that is one of the best in the U.S. and is run by Fletcher Kittredge, formerly of BBN and Harvard University. His tech knoweldge is complimented by many at GWI including his head of marketing, Rick Preti. In 2004, Kittredge talked very honestly to me about Lucent equipment and in 2005, the company rolled out a VoIP service that was far ahead of its time.
GWI proposed two very different projects: an ambitious fiber middle mile project that would help almost the entire state and a local project for one of the beautiful small islands off Maine’s coast, Chebeague Island.
Both of GWI’s projects are excellent.
Also recommended by the governor were the state library system’s public computer center project and a WiMAX sustainable broadband initiative from independent ISP Axiom Technologies. The latter submitted a fascinating education application to serve a county where the overall poverty rate is just over 20 percent and is nearly 30 percent for children. The project will help improve farming, deliver telehealth, support business broadband, and measure the project’s effectiveness through a partnership with the University of Maine.
I think this last part is important — most of the sustainable broadband adoption or education programs have little provision for measuring their own success.
Two applications were rejected by the state of Maine. USA Webhost, the letter says, did not prove that its project was sustainable and did not prove that its infrastructure project would connect to the internet.
I strongly applaud the state of main for rejecting an application from a cellular provider on the grounds that cellular service does not meet the state’s definition of broadband. Vanu Coverage Company of Cambridge, Mass. submitted three applications worth $41 million — almost equal to all of the 7 recommended by the state — to deliver PCS cellular service. I agree that PCS cellular service is not broadband.
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