The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) has funded several regional broadband consortia in northern and central California. At its third annual Rural Connections workshop in Redding this week, representatives from six groups presented the results of their work over the past couple of years. Two, covering California's Gold Country and Redwood Coast, stood out as having made genuine progress toward bringing Silicon Valley-grade Internet service to areas that are otherwise off the broadband map.


 Gold Country Connect provides prospective investors
 with broadband planning toolsBrent Smith, CEO of Sierra Economic Development Corporation, and Connie Stewart from Humboldt State University had success stories to tell. Three key lessons stood out:

1. Seek out motivated investors, including competitive local exchange carriers and independent Internet service providers, and find ways to improve their business cases and nudge them towards your goals. Don't waste everyone's time trying to bribe or bully them into accepting your plans or implementing your programs. A patchwork of operating networks beats a pristine concept with no takers, every time.

2. Do your homework and make sure it's A-grade. Simple, quantitative market research that identifies market gaps and charts statistically valid demand at defined price points is pure gold to private sector investments analysts. A centralized broadband mapping project with service provider buy-in, like that run by Chico State University, puts the cards face up on the table and lets everyone get down to business without posturing and poor mouthing.

3. Subsidies help, but don't necessarily need to be large. A guaranteed loan, a little local capital, even a tax break can tip the balance for a potential private sector broadband investor. When bigger subsidies are needed, the lion's share of the risk can still fall on private investors. The California Advanced Services Fund will do a 40% match against private capital in underserved areas, and that's been enough for hundreds of kilometers of fiber.

Unified community support is important, and creates a level of comfort that the project can be implemented. Leadership is needed to gain rights of way, permits and variances, and overcome bureaucratic inertia. Business analysts are more impressed by political muscle and professional, statistically valid research than they are by crayon drawings from a third grade class.

Real progress in other CETF-sponsored consortia has been hampered by a focus on community feel-good exercises and unworldly research. Evidently, Chico State's mapping expertise is not matched by its economics department: someone there seems to think you can do a demand aggregation study without asking tiresome questions about price elasticity. The good thing about this kind of conference is that public sector decision makers get to see what works and what doesn't, and can respond appropriately.

The last item on the conference agenda was the decision to come back for a fourth year. Expect to see a longer list of success stories.

It's time to look past the stimulus program, and re-adjust community broadband planning assumptions. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and the Rural Utilities Service's (RUS) Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) encouraged local groups to roll themselves up into regional alliances and propose magnificent projects that would meet any conceivable need and serve every user imaginable.

It made sense, because that's where the money was. NTIA and RUS made some dreams real in the first round last year, and are on track to fulfill a few more fantasies in the second round. But even though BTOP is reopening for what amounts to a stunted, public-safety focused third round, the good times are over and we have to return to the old normal.

It's a world where the free money is mostly gone. Once the BTOP money is spent, NTIA goes back to being a small agency running small programs. In rural areas, RUS and state programs, like the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), will provide grants and loans to organizations with a qualifying track record and, in some cases, enough cash to fund half or more of proposed projects themselves.


 Adelstein and RUS general
 field representative Harry Hutson showed
 CETF conference attendees in Redding
 how the first round BIP money went
 down the spoutRUS won't fund projects that compete with their existing loan portfolio, however. Speaking to the California Emerging Technologies Fund's third annual Rural Connections workshop in Redding this week, RUS administrator Jonathan Adelstein made it clear that the agency will give priority to organizations that it already funds, and won't subsidize competing projects.

CASF expects it will continue to fund new broadband projects in California, but only in areas where AT&T, Verizon and the cable companies fail to upgrade infrastructure. A few arguable urban pockets aside, it's the remote rural regions that have a shot.

Elsewhere, community broadband advocates will have to go back to the basics. Tried and true economic development strategies, like public-private partnerships, tax breaks and other incentives, and old fashioned salesmanship, will be effective. But only where public agencies and community advocates can present a focused and well documented business case and be flexible enough to accept that private capital comes with its own priorities.

The old normal is a world where subscriber metrics, return on investment and anchor tenants trump grand visions, sad stories and political grease. Painstaking determination and hard work count again, though. That's a world worth calling home.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) put on a great show in San Francisco on Friday. Hosted by Commissioner Rachelle Chong, and featuring State of California CIO Teri Takai, Susan Walters from the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF), and several very well prepared staffers, the workshop covered the essential details you need to know in order to apply for NTIA's BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program) grants or RUS's BIP (Broadband Initiatives Program) money, and to have a hope of getting matching funds from either CPUC via the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) or CETF.

The presentations and audience questions shed some light – sometimes intentionally, sometimes not – on what's going on behind the scenes as the mad scramble to file applications by the 14 August 2009 deadline continues. The presentations, handouts and other items of interest are posted on my website.

Here's how I see it...

BIP Loans and Grants
The Rural Utilities Service is out in front by furlong, before they've even hit the first turn. RUS has more than 70 years of experience milking Washington on behalf of its clients and it shows. It's going nearly all in on this round, offering $2.4 billion now and leaving only $300 million for future rounds. That way, the rural carriers it supports can come back for NTIA money in the second and third rounds. And its written its rules to favor the good old boys. Existing recipients of RUS pork get explicit priority for funding, and the grantmaking criteria – which look impenetrable to the uninitiated – are as familiar as a dead armadillo to those in the know.

BTOP Broadband Infrastructure Grants
If you're a regional telephone company, you live and breath the detailed documentation required to submit an application. Broadband availability and subscribership levels down to the census block level? No problem, we have a junior analyst keeping our database warm just in case someone asks. Plans certified by a professional engineer? Financials done to GAAP standards? Long list of people we won't fire, I'm sorry, of jobs created or preserved? No worries, it's already posted on our web site. And so it goes.

For well prepared community broadband proposals – projects that are well along the pipeline – there's a glimmer of hope. Everyone else, get in line and expect to stay there, even if you've kept your project under the $1 million threshold because you thought it meant an easier ride. $1.2 billion is on the table this round. Here's how I see the applications shaking out:

• Rock solid proposals, written almost as if they knew in advance what the questions would be: 500 to 1,000, mostly incumbent telcos and big MSOs (okay, in innovative coalitions and public/private partnerships with blah blah blah).
• Arguably complete applications that might or might not withstand several rounds of reviews, including a 30 day challenge period when the telcos can rip them to shreds: maybe 2,000 applications, covering a mixed bag of CLECs, cable companies, cities, middle mile providers and eternally optimistic entrepreneurs.
• Hail Mary requests for $999,000 written by the summer intern: 5,000 requests from middle managers who want the boss to think they did it by working through lunch hour. Caveat: this estimate is subject to revision. There might not be 5,000 middle managers still employed in America.

Infrastructure projects funded: 100 to 150, mostly to the big telcos, with some small fry included to make it look like the fix wasn't in.

BTOP Public Computer Center Grants
Every school, community college, local government, Boys and Girls Club and Elks Lodge with a grant writer will apply for this one. Expect 10,000 or more applications for the $50 million available, with maybe 500 awarded. The bulk of the money will go towards program costs, not hardware, which means something like 1,000 jobs funded for a year or less.

BTOP Sustainable Broadband Adoption Grants
Huh? Oh, you mean you didn't know we're giving priority to projects that are allied with larger ARRA-funded stimulations? Sorry about that, but if you've scored a big health services or education grant, be sure to stop by the BTOP desk on the way out to pick up a few million for a telemedicine or distance learning add-on, after all we have $150 million that's shovel ready this round. Everyone else, well, thanks for sending in those 20,000 applications, and we apologize for not explaining what sustainable broadband adoption means. We figured it would be really funny to just let everyone guess.

Don't forget to reapply in round 2!

A story making the rounds -- and it might even be true -- is that the National Institute of Health received 15,000 applications for stimulus grants that it's administering. Of those, about 400 got funded in the first round. Based on the accelerating interest in the broadband stimulus program, it's very possible -- likely, I think -- that we'll see a similar response.

The broadband stimulus money is still sitting in the pipeline. Latest word is that NTIA will release the grant criteria on 30 June 2009, and allow a month or six weeks for applications to be prepared. Those applications would be reviewed in the September to December range, with award announcements expected by the end of the year, or shortly thereafter.

That's for the first round of three. Round two applications would be due in the October - December 2009 time frame, with reviews beginning in January 2010 and awards expected by April 2010. The last round of applications would be due in the first quarter of 2010, maybe as late as April, with awards being announced maybe by June 2010.

The RUS money might flow a little faster, but there's less of it. And then again, it might not.

Earlier, the California Emerging Technology Fund had indicated that it was ready to provide some or all of the required 20% matching funds for broadband projects, but it looks to be pulling back a bit. Latest news is that CETF will help with matching funds for broadband adoption programs, but not for broadband infrastructure construction. The California Public Utilities Commission is still a potential source for matching funds, but no guarantees there.

Following a couple weeks of meetings and conference calls with industry, government and community people, and doing some reading, the broadband portion of the stimulus package isn't looking so stimulating...

• The real fight is on now. Lobbying groups are fully engaged as the NTIA determines the scoring criteria it will use. The process will continue over the next two to three weeks. There are more hearings scheduled for Washington, plus two others next week, one in Las Vegas and one in Flagstaff. Expect wonks from all sides to parachute in, trying to tweak details and definitions to their advantage. Same story for the RUS money.
• The deck seems stacked against urban community broadband projects. The focus at this point is on two criteria, 1. job creation and 2. reaching unserved and underserved areas. In that order. Big city interests want to equate "underserved" with "unaffordable", but even if they are successful, they're pitching jobs tomorrow against jobs today.
• There are three kinds of jobs that could be created via broadband process: one-time system construction, ongoing system operations, and second order effects where the availability/affordability of broadband creates and/or preserves jobs down the road.
• The consensus within the industry is that priority will go toward construction jobs, because those will get money into peoples hands and then into the economy most quickly. I wrote about this subject earlier.
• At the state level, the expectation is that substantially all of the NTIA money will go through the states. That's probably not realistic. The broadband portion of the stimulus bill, unlike nearly all of the rest of the bill, does not require the money to flow through the states.
• Community and municipal people think that taking the state out of the funding stream means the NTIA will direct more money directly to community projects. That possibility becomes likelier if the current lobbying efforts directed at NTIA's scoring criteria are successful. But the prevailing industry view is that the reason the NTIA money doesn't necessarily flow through states is because the big incumbent carriers, like AT&T and Verizon, won the day in Congress and will be at the head of the line.
• The prevailing industry view also assumes that some money will go to community projects, if only for appearances sake. If so, cities could be in line for a bit of funding if a concrete job creation case can be made.
• The California Emerging Technology Fund has identified a substantial amount of money – more than $60 billion – that the stimulus bill directs towards broadband-related technology projects, with health-related IT projects at the top of the list. Most of that money ($55 billion? More?) will flow through the states, and CETF and the California governor's office are well positioned to claim a nice chunk. The $7.2 billion of NTIA and RUS money could slipt away from them, though.
• Everyone agrees that the process is moving quickly, that the fact that several key positions in the new administration are unfilled makes the process very difficult, and that presenting a unified message, if not speaking with one voice, is the key to being heard before the scoring criteria are set. The game could be all but over by the end of March or the beginning of April.
• The FCC is in the act as well. It's planning to come up with a national broadband strategy by the end of May. I think it's a mistake to think that it will have much influence on NTIA and RUS grant decisions. The grants, and the process of making the grants, will create jobs, or so the Obama administration thinks. The FCC process will create or save jobs -- mostly for lobbyists, lawyers and other Beltway bandits, but a job is a job, I guess. It's about jobs, not grand broadband policy or even coherent management.

The mantra so far is "fast, fast, fast". Fair enough. But everyone will want a say, then everyone will want a say regarding what everyone else said. It would be nice if the serious money actually started to flow by this Summer, or even by Fall. It would be nice. But I'm not counting on it.