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.
Furthermore, applicants in round one are waiting to learn the answers to several important questions including:
- Whether the government will prefer any internet technologies, or exclude any, from the stimulus.
- Whether applications from the poorest areas, which will require a 100 percent grant, will be accepted.
- Whether applications from for-profit companies will be accepted, and if so, under what circumstances.
- Whether the organizations handling the grants will be able to thoroughly examine all applications — given that applicants have applied for several times the total cash allocated, there’s a larger volume of grant applications to review than the institutions expected to receive, I believe.
These and other questions remain.