Federal Broadband Stimulus Funds to Come in as Soon as Three Weeks

The first round of broadband stimulus funding handed out by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) won't nearly match the demand. "It's just stunning the creativity and industriousness in these proposals," said Lawrence Strickling, NTIA's director. "It's sad we don't have the money to fund them all; we were oversubscribed seven times." The good news is that the NTIA and RUS have a request for information (RFI) out, with a November 30 deadline, as it seeks input from states to tweak and streamline the application process. This marks a prelude to second round of funding that would include a longer application window before funds must be distributed by September 2010. Of the $2.5 billion available to the RUS, loans to applicants would allow some leveraging, said Jonathan Adelstein, RUS administrator. "We can leverage it up to $7 billion or $9 billion; whatever we use for loans we can leverage up to 14 to 1," he said. "We want to use that money to service the more rural and difficult-to-reach areas." The RUS oversees quite a large footprint; 72 percent of the United States is rural land mass. Quite a bit of that represents underserved or unserved area, and Adelstein said his agency is doing all it can to get his funds out, also starting in early December. The time crunch has meant viewing funding and loan applications at breakneck speed, and Adelstein told about 200 attendees "you can help us with the map, to flag the areas that are truly unserved or underserved."