Several companies and trade associations offered previews of filings they'll submit to the FCC June 8 responding to its inquiry on establishing a national broadband plan. Many of the early comments focused on the net neutrality debate, urging the commission to rely on the open market for Internet regulation.
Tim Warren
Timothy Warren is Executive Managing Editor of Communications Daily. He previously led the International Trade Today editorial team from the time it was purchased by Warren Communications News in 2012 through the launch of Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. Tim is a 2005 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and lives in Maryland with his wife and three kids.
Despite a $7.2 billion federal investment in broadband deployment, dial-up Internet could play an important role for years to come, say analysts and industry insiders. The decline and disappearance of dial-up, which has been called inevitable for close to a decade, is taking much longer than many expected, and it could remain a viable business for several more years, they said.
Public libraries are on the offensive, making a case to the NTIA and the RUS for a significant share of the $7.2 billion in federal broadband money to connect most libraries to high-speed fiber. Connecting the country’s more than 16,500 public libraries would cost an estimated $20,000 each, about $331 million total, said President John Windhausen of Telepoly, a telecom consultancy working with the American Library Association. More-remote libraries would cost closer to $40,000 to connect, and urban ones near fiber rings about $10,000, he said.
A former senior legal advisor to FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein will be chief of staff at the Rural Utilities Service, several sources told Communications Daily. Lisa Zaina, currently assistant vice president of regulatory affairs at CTIA, will rejoin Adelstein, who was picked to head the Agriculture Department’s RUS earlier this year. Zaina was an advisor to Adelstein at the FCC from 2002 to 2004. As chief of staff Zaina would help oversee RUS’ doling out of $2.5 billion in federal funds to expand the reach of broadband.
Applicants are more likely to get a piece of the $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds if they list projects that are multipurpose and include multiple partners, public or private, said telecom lawyer James Baller. At the National Association for Telecommunications Officers and Advisers conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Baller said the best applications will likely mirror what has been successful in other areas.
Increased Internet speed throughout the country is necessary to keep the nation’s low-income workers and unemployed trained and looking for jobs, said panelists. They spoke at a Monday lunch hosted by the Alliance for Digital Equality, the Alliance for Public Technology, and the Communications Workers of America. The $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funding can help bridge the “digital divide” between connected and underserved areas, they said.
The federal broadband stimulus funds whose availability was announced in February are stirring up activity among lobbyists despite the Obama administration’s stringent rules that aim to mute the effect lobbyists can have on project funding, an analysis of public lobbying records shows.
The $7.2 billion federal broadband stimulus already seems to be stimulating jobs in one profession: grant writing. Several technology companies and temporary employee placement firms are advertising on the Internet for broadband stimulus grant writers to help with the paperwork.
Rural America hungers enough for high speed broadband to make deployment economically feasible despite recent polls that say otherwise, said panelists at a Benton Foundation luncheon Thursday. “This is about livelihood,” said Tim Nulty, project director of the East Central Vermont Community Fiber-Optic Network. Nulty, who has overseen fiber network construction in 22 rural Vermont townships, said none of the necessary referenda had less than 98 percent support and eight had unanimous support.
States are scrambling to gather information on their broadband needs to be ready for the Notice of Funding Availability connected to broadband stimulus, which is expected before July, said officials of several state utility commissions and governors’ offices. As the NTIA and the RUS work on rules for handing out the $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds, some states with large swaths of rural areas have already nailed down substantial amounts of connectivity information.