Applications Come In for Second Round of Broadband Stimulus Funding

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Applications for the second round of U.S. broadband stimulus funding are starting to become publicly available on a federal .

Approximately 870 applications had been posted to the database as of Saturday, according to Stimulating Broadband, a website dedicated to tracking broadband stimulus funding.

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). There are two programs: RUS Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) and the NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). BIP will make loans and grants for broadband infrastructure projects in rural areas, while BTOP will provide grants to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers and sustainable broadband adoption project.

The first phase was slated to award $4 billion, a little more than half of the total $7.2 billion. In the first round alone, $28 billion in requests was made. Awards started being announced in December.

Until all the applications are posted -- for example, none of the RUS applications have been posted yet -- analysis can't be performed, according to an article in Stimulating Broadband. However, the number of NTIA applications is a significant decrease from the 1,789 received in the first round, the article said.

Interestingly, U.S West (Qwest), which sat out the first round, issued a press release -- one of the only applicants to do so -- saying it was applying for $350 million, 75 percent of the cost of a $467 million project among its 14 western and midwestern state service area. As it is an RUS project, it is not yet posted to the database.

"Qwest proposes to build facilities to serve more than half a million homes, schools, businesses and hospitals that lack access to today's high-speed Internet capabilities," the company said. "It plans to introduce the service at download speeds of 12 to 40 Mbps."

Originally, according to an article in the Denver Business Journal, Qwest had said it would not apply for the money because it could not be used for areas within 60 miles of cities. However, this rule was changed earlier this year, and Qwest said at that time it would be applying. Another factor that interested Qwest is that second-round grants fund 75 percent of the costs, whereas earlier grants would have funded only 50 percent of the cost.

The biggest grant to have been awarded thus far is $126 million, according to an in Network World.

Grants are scheduled to be awarded by Sept. 30.

Dani AI

Generated

As observed, the public filings contain a lot of raw material. Useful analysis focuses on a few concrete signals of feasibility rather than reading every page end-to-end. The checklist below highlights technical, financial, and compliance items that separate credible builds from hopeful proposals.

  • Documents to locate first: project narrative, budget workbook with per-line math, coverage shapefile or maps, engineering diagrams, letters of commitment for matching funds, project schedule/milestones, and an operations/maintenance plan.
  • Technical design checks: last‑mile technology choice and justification, PoP/backhaul capacity and redundancy, interconnection/transit/peering plan, IPv6 readiness, oversubscription assumptions, and whether firewalls, DDoS mitigation, and monitoring/automation are specified.
  • Financial realism checks: explicit cost‑per‑pass and cost‑per‑subscriber, firm vendor quotes or contracts, signed matching‑fund commitments, realistic take‑rate assumptions, and an O&M funding path beyond initial grant.
  • Regulatory/readiness checks: evidence of right‑of‑way or permit progress, environmental/historic review steps, and compliance with prevailing wage/contracting rules where applicable.
  • Sustainability and governance: clear operator, maintenance responsibilities, upgrade path, and contingency for low take‑rates.

Common red flags include missing shapefiles or engineering drawings, budgets that lack line‑item math, timelines that assume immediate permitting, single backhaul links with no failover, and reliance on unverifiable matching funds. From a router/proxy/firewall perspective, proposals that omit routing/peering details or ignore DDoS and management plane security are weak.

Quick 3‑step workflow for analysts: (1) open the coverage shapefile and confirm claimed unserved areas, (2) validate budget line items and matching‑fund documents, (3) inspect network diagrams for redundant backhaul, clear PoP locations, and security measures. This approach makes it practical to triage many filings while flagging a smaller set for deeper review.

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