THE BACKGROUND
Broadband access to the Internet has become a vital information medium in our society. It is an invaluable public tool for communications, education, conducting business, locating resources, health care, law enforcement, banking/finance, creative arts, entertainment, and all other areas of human interaction. Dial-up Internet access has very limited capability to serve the public due to the extreme volume of data required to accomplish relatively simple tasks in today’s computing environment. Since broadband access is not a regulated utility, it is only available to the public where it can generate profits for telecommunications companies. Other geographic areas must depend on dial-up or very expensive and unreliable satellite access. Those who live and work in such rural and remote areas do not have the opportunity to be as productive in life as those who are served by the legacy broadband providers.
In an effort to spur economic growth and create jobs through our present economic downturn, the government is providing $7.4 billion of grant and loan funding through two agencies for the completion of the broadband infrastructure in the U. S. This is part of the Stimulus Bill (or ARRA). These agencies have already received applications for the first of two rounds of funding. Applicants were only given a month to submit extremely complex and lengthily requests. Still, 2200 organizations submitted requests for $24 billion in funding (only $2.2 billion was allocated for the first round).
As a result, a third round was cancelled, and the agencies are overwhelmed as they attempt to process the applications. The second round is to be announced once the first round is sorted out. It is expected that there will again only be a short submission period once the announcement is made.
AT&T, Verizon, Quest, Sprint, Comcast and other telecommunication giants have all opted-out of applying for funding. There reason is said to be a protest against the government’s insistence that any funded network will be an open connection to the Internet, which precludes proprietary interference. They will, however, be actively protesting applications that infringe on incumbent territories since that would represent government funded competition.
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