NTIA, RUS To Delay Announcement Of Broadband Bid Winners

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/366614-NTIA_RUS_To_Delay_Announcement_Of_Broadband_Bid_Winners.php ^ | 10-27-09 | John Eggerton

[bigbob]

The naming of winning bidders in the broadband stimulus grant/loan program will be delayed by a month or so, according to the heads of the relevant government agencies.

The self-imposed deadline had been early November, but NTIA head Larry Strickling said Tuesday: "We're going to take a few more weeks here to get this right...I will not fund a bad application."

That came in a Senate Commerce Committee's Communications Subcommittee oversight hearing on the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) and Rural Utilities Services' (RUS) broadband stimulus grant and loan programs under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.

The committee heard from Strickling, RUS administrator and former FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, and Mark Goldstein, who heads up infrastructure issues for the Goverment Accountability Office.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) says the government needs to simplify the broadband stimulus grant/loan program, and said he knows that the heads of those programs agree.

The definition of remote was a key issue in the hearing.

Rockefeller echoed concerns expressed in the House about the definition of remote, which is currently defined as at least 50 miles from an urban area.

Adelstein said there is a growing consensus that the 50 miles might have been the wrong figure, and that there were other ways to define remote, like population density or income.

Rockefeller pushed the issue, asking whether that change would be made. "There is really no excuse for us not doing that," he said. Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) also has problems with the current definition. He asked for more specficis.

Adelstein said everything is on the table in what will be a top-to-bottom review of how to better define remote, but at the same time not make the definition too complicated. "We'll help you," said Kerry.

Senator Kerry asked wether underserved blocks in urban areas would also get the government's help with adoption. Strickling said yes. He asked what NTIA's approach would be to anchor institutions.

Strickling said that those institutions may be where the government should be concentrating much of its money, particularly in the initial round of funding.

NTIA had been preparing in the next couple of weeks to announce the first winners in what will now be a two-step process of handing out billions in stimulus money for broadband mapping, adoption and service to unserved and underserved areas.

That will now be pushed to early December. Adelstein cited the complexity of the program and the demands on the agencies, a point echoed by Goldstein.

The cable and telco industries have criticized the process by which incumbents are able to check out the claims by bidders of unserved and underserved, including the 30-day deadline to weigh in. Even given those challenges, the National Cable & Telecommunications Assocociation and US Telecom say that they have uncovered hundreds of bids for areas where they already provide broadband service.

Comcast planned to provide supporting data for some of those hundreds of overlaps by Wednesday (Oct. 28), the 30-day deadline incumbents have to challenge bidders' claims, though Comcast says it is not challenging, simply providing information.

[bigbob]

Remember how the Porkulus bill just HAD to be rushed through to 'save the economy' - without even time to read it? Remember how important it was to throw $7 billion down a rathole to extend broadband to rural areas for people who someone didn't feel like putting up a dish? And remember how urgent it was to get all those unemployed broadband installers back to work?

But hey, we've moved from the definition of "is" to bigger words, like "remote"...

Well now it's more important to "get this right"...where have we heard that before? Gimme an "O"...