$6 Billion Boost for Rural Broadband?

The U.S. House of Representatives version of a stimulus plan includes $6 billion dollars in grants for broadband deployment. The Senate will have its own economic recovery package, but the Fiber to the Home Council believes that the proposal is a good indication of where Congress is headed on the issue of broadband.

 

The responsibility for awarding the broadband grants would be divided between the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the Department of Commerce.  

The RUS money ($2.825 billion) would bolster the agency's current program of grants, loans and loan-guarantees to extend broadband infrastructure into largely unserved rural areas, and would not require that the services provide connection speeds higher than what typically passes for broadband today.

 

The NTIA money (also $2.825 billion) will consist of new grant programs for the development of broadband and wireless services in unserved and underserved areas.  Of this amount, $1.825 billion would be for wireline broadband - and 75 percent of that ($1.37 billion) is directed toward "advanced broadband," which is defined in the legislation as 45 Mbps down and 15 Mbps up.

About half the money would be of obvious interest to providers of fixed broadband in rural areas, as the new funds would simply bolster existing efforts to subsidize broadband deployment in rural areas. The other half is noteworthy because, if the eligibility rules remain as now conceived, the new infrastructure will have to operate at a minimum of 45 Mbps downstream and at least 15 Mbps upstream. 

That might provide a boost for wireless-based providers, such as Clearwire, if bidding rules allow them to compete. Fixed networks would have to deploy a "deep fiber" design to allow such bandwidths, in all likelihood. There is likely to be some wrangling over the right to bid for such support. 

Some tier one providers, such as Qwest, do serve many rural communities in the western United States, though Qwest has generally been denied rural broadband support because that support is awarded on a "statewide" basis rather than on a "community" basis.