Maine Makes The Tough Decisions

November 19th, 2009

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.

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The ILECs Challenge the Stimulus

November 18th, 2009

As the ILECs start challenging stimulus applications, I’m hearing that applicants will not get a chance to dispute the ILECs’ complaints. This would be bad. The allocation process is already underfunded. Fierce Telecom has more.

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Florida Blasts State Review Process in Letter

November 18th, 2009

In the letter to the NTIA (obtained from the Baller Herbst website), the special assistant to the governor of Florida, Charlie Crist (R), made seven timely and specific complaints about the review process. Most important were that the states did not receive the full applications — a problem I was not aware of of — and that states were asked to review all the applications that covered many or all states.

A staff that had been expecting to review 12 applications ended up having to look at 120, and the letter complains about the resulting dilution of review resources, a legitimate complaint. For the multistate appplications especially, NTIA could have helped by sharing their own reviewers’ scores of those applications, but did not do so.

As for specific applications in Florida, I will withhold comment because I worked on one of them and am therefore biased strongly in its favor.

In summary, I think the state of Florida did excellent work and also did well in speaking out.

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Connecticut’s Governor Recommends All Six Applicants

November 13th, 2009

In contrast to other governors, Jodi Rell (R) of Connecticut managed to recommend all six applications for her state without seeming unreasonable.

Applicants were: City of Manchester, City of New Haven, Hartford, West Hartford, and East Hartford. Hartford, CT is the capital of the state and may have had undue influence, but all applications seem reasonable.

The sixth application is from AlphaStar and uses satellite technology. I think that it is not as good as the other five. It is a large project, partially redacted, so the public cannot judge it but based on the information submitted, I think the government should ask for a partial rollout of it in order to prove it works.

The governor of Connecticut also supported a number of large nationwide projects. I think that for some of these projects, the government should request a pilot project in order to prove they work before funding the entire grant request.

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Fines Do Nothing To Telcos

November 11th, 2009

Today, the state of Florida endorsed years of bad service by fining Verizon a mere $2 per customer for slow repairs on the Gulf Coast, according to DSL Reports.

Time and time again, regulators have implicitly endorsed poor service by refusing to fine telcos at a level that would provide a disincentive for harm to consumers. Verizon got away with this activity for years and is paying less than a month’s profit per customer.

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Isenberg Joins FCC

November 11th, 2009

Congratulations David Isenberg — and congratulations FCC for making an excellent choice!

Here’s his blog post on the matter:

http://isen.com/blog/2009/11/i-joined-fcc-national-broadband-plan.html

More here from the FCC’s broadband blog.

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California Recommends All Applications

November 6th, 2009

While Alaska’s governor chose (letter available here but I could not find it on California government websites) to recommend no applications, California governor Schwarzenegger (R) chose to recommend most of them, including many multistate projects based in California.

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.

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Colorado Recommends Some Expensive Projects

November 5th, 2009

States have to make some tough decisions. The top recommended project on the Colorado governor’s list (h/t Baller Herbst Law Firm’s stimulus resources), the Colorado Community Anchor Broadband Consortium (CCABC) asks for $175 million in grants and also $175 million in loans. That’s a lot, even if it connects every educational institution and public library in the state.

It will be a tough decision for the federal government, which may not have $350 million for Colorado and may have to fund only part of the project.

The next project on the list, Brainstorm Internet, was one of the best-written applications I saw. It uses DragonWave for backhaul and Redline’s WiMAX equipment and promises to reach a large number of businesses and residences, relative to cost. It looks like a very solid project, exactly what the stimulus was designed for, and asks for only about $6 million, half grant and half loans.

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Georgia’s Perdue Provides a Brochure

October 30th, 2009

Georgia’s round one comment on the stimulus is beautifully prepared. Given the short amount of time given to states, many chose to do the minimum required, or did what they could. Georgia and its governor Sonny Perdue (R) has excelled in the state letter to the federal government, here taken from the excellent Baller Herbst Law Group website.

In some cases, the state has recommended a lower grant or grant / loan combo than was requested. That’s excellent work.

One applicant not listed: Jedai Networks, which filed 28 applications. I don’t have the details on Jedai’s applications, but I worry that some submitted too many applications. Utopian Wireless Corporation, on the other hand, was on the list. Utopian appears to have done its homework.

The state managed to recommend some of the smaller applications, such as a $202,000 request from the Effingham County Board of Education. This is a good sign. I hope that the states have time to work with applicants for smaller amounts of funds.

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Arizona Governor Brewer Recommends In Three Levels

October 30th, 2009

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (D) divded her 21 recommendations into three levels: Exeptional, Outstanding, and Deserving.

I could not find the letter on a government site but obtained it through the StimuluatingBroadband blog people — Pratt Networks — here.

The only Exceptional middle mile project in the letter in the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, a roughly $34 million project, half grant and half loan, mixing fiber, microwave, and wireless. No objections to it! Looks like a good project.

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