It's Official: No Broadband Will Be Stimulated This Year (Or Will It?)

The first details of the BTOP program were recently released and are available on Recovery.gov.

While light on details, the most interesting insight found herein are the timelines for achieving milestones. Interesting and depressing, that is.

Why do I say "depressing"? For one primary reason: the initial grants aren't slated to be made until 12/31/2009.

So much for this program being about "stimulating" broadband deployment quickly during an economic crisis.

Now I know NTIA faces a huge challenge in determining how to best distribute these funds and that they've been working at a disadvantage without a leader confirmed and in place, and in general I would prefer they take their time to make sure the money's well-spent, but I can't help but be frustrated at the glacial pace of goverment.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed in mid-February, and yet the best we can do to get dollars distributed is a 10-month turnaround? And for northern states we're really talking about at least a 14-month delay as they won't be able to start deploying until April at the earliest even if they get money in December.

I have to admit I'm disappointed that government isn't being more aggressive at getting grants out the door. Particularly because there are plenty of worthy shovel-ready projects that could be approved quickly, funded, and deploying now rather than next year.

Sure to do this will require government to be flexible and go about its business in a different way, but I don't see why we're accepting business-as-usual at a time when we have a new administration supposedly committed to overturning that stagnation in an attempt to find a better way to do business.

So what might a better way to distribute these grants more quickly look like? Well how about this: have the government set out a set of standards that if a project can live up to can get fast-track grant approval.

Now let's consider how these standards could work.

Let's start with unserved/underserved. Rather than getting stuck in a policy debate over semantics, why not just set the standard that to qualify for the fast-track a network must hit at least 50% unserved homes, and set some restrictions on making sure these grants don't go to areas with robust competition (DSL, cable, and wireless being available, for example).

Then I'd add in a requirement that the project have proven local support, maybe having to reach a 50% pre-subscription rate. This would then mean the first grants go to those communities who have most galvanized local support and will also help insure the network will be financially sustainable. (50% is an arbitrary number; it could be higher or lower depending on what's most appropriate.)

These two standards alone could be enough, or if the goal of the broadband stimulus is to create testbeds then why not be a bit more aspirational?

For example, set high capacity requirements, not necessarily tied to what levels of Internet service are offered but instead related to the in-network capacity of the network being built and/or the reliability of that network. In other words, can it deliver the speed it promises.

Another thought would be to go ahead and reward projects setting out to prove that open networks where multiple service providers compete over the same infrastructure can be economically viable.

And it makes sense to reward networks that will deploy ubiquitously, reaching everyone equally vs. cherry-picking and only bringing the best broadband to the most affluent customers.

Also, instead of getting caught up in the debate of fiber vs. wireless, why not subsidize the best broadband projects, which include fiber pipes with a wireless cloud over the top?

Let's review. To get money out the door more quickly, NTIA could setup a fast-track approval process based on the following set of standards:

- Projects that reach at least 50% unserved homes
- Projects that can prove at least 50% local support/pre-subscription rates
- Projects that deliver reliable, high-capacity networks
- Projects that support multiple competing service providers over the same infrastructure
- Projects that include robust, ubiquitous wireline and wireless access

I'd argue that any projects that can live up to these standards shouldn't have to wait for what may be another year in northern states before they can start deploying. These are the kinds of projects we should be supporting now.

I can't accept that the best we can do is a 10 to 14-month turnaround. There's got to be a better way to start stimulating broadband deployment today. And if the point of this initial BTOP money is to establish testbeds for sustainable networks, then I don't see why we should make everyone wait when we could be making progress to start proving these models sooner rather than later.