Broadband Provisions in Federal Stimulus Bill
Grants through the broadband stimulus bill can potentially bring significant job creation and other economic benefits to small towns and rural communities. However, few of these benefits will reach full fruition if you don't pay attention to D.C. during the next 30 days. There's one more river to cross.
Broadband networks will impact your community in several ways, some in a relatively short time. First, businesses boost profits selling nationally and even worldwide once they have high-speed access. People who are unemployed or want a little extra financial security start home-based businesses.
New businesses looking for more affordable real estate start moving to small towns once broadband is in place. Rural areas in North Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana and others are quite adept at using their broadband networks to attract new businesses and new jobs.
Small communities also use these network to improve youth education and job training for displaced work or those wanting to advance to better-paying jobs. This achieves long-term economic impact while you reap short-term benefits in other areas.
Broadband improves healthcare delivery. People who can't get to a doctor for preventative healthcare, or see a specialist for serious illness or injury financially drain a community's infrastructure. Telemedicine applications using broadband also enable people to resolve some issues without missing work to travel for hours to big-city medical facilities.
If you want to bring these and other benefits home, it's critically important to influence the process by which these broadband grants are administered.
The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) is holding meetings at their offices starting March 2nd for anyone who wants to drop in and offer ideas on how to distribute the grants. On March 10th at 10:00 a.m. NTIA, the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the FCC are jointly holding a public meeting to discuss and gather feedback on key issues, including how awards are made and to what entities.
You, or your advocates, must participate in these meetings if you want this money to flow quickly to communities that really need the benefits. We are on the brink of a great opportunity to bridge that digital divide between small-town and big-city America. But small-town America must step into the breach between legislative mandate and agency edict to ensure those dollars come straight to the communities without state intervention. You also want commercial and nonprofit entities that receive grant money be required to first have partnerships with local governments that guarantee the networks they build best meet the needs of the taxpayers who are funding the projects.
Craig Settles is an industry analyst and consultant who helps communities develop use broadband networks for economic development. His blog, Fighting the Next Good Fight , is closely monitoring efforts to implement the broadband stimulus bill.