Funding Broadband Wireless for Your Community

Tell a Friend

On Wednesday morning at the Digital Cities Convention in Washington, DC, Michael Pellegrino, management analyst officer in the Grants.gov office at the Department of Health and Human Services, explained how the portal supports 26 different federal grant-making agencies. Applicants search for grants, download applications, submit them through grants.gov, and then the application goes back through the agency itself. “We are the vehicle, we are not responsible for the awarding of any funds,” Pellegrino said. A call-in center provides assistance to applicants.

Grants.gov was established in 2002 as part of the President’s e-Government Initiative Management Agenda. There are more than 1,000 programs on Grants.gov, and more than $400 billion in money. It’s run by an office of seven federal employees with a number of contractor staff in different subject-matter areas.

The US Department of Agriculture is one federal agency that is reviewing federal loan and grant dollars for broadband infrastructure deployment, said Jacki M. Ponti-Lazaruk, Assistant Administrator for Telecommunications with the USDA's Rural Development Utilities Programs. More than $6-billion has been invested through the Telcom program since 2001 to ensure that infrastructure is upgraded and ready to provide the types of services rural America needs.

"Since 1996, all our telephone borrowers have been required to build to a standard that would provide broadband, and therefore most if not all of our borrowers are providing broadband,” said Ponti-Lazaruk.

There is much interest in Broadband Loans, the newest program, which provides loans for the cost of constructing, improving and acquiring facilities and equipment to provide broadband service in communities. It's well funded, and almost everyone and anyone can participate. Unlike the USDA's traditional telephone program, which is reserved more for the rural telcos, this program is available to local communities.

"Last year we made $259 million in loans," Ponti-Lazaruk said. "Those are the ones that were obligated. We also approved another $268 million of loans that we’re working to close and obligate early in this year. If the continuing resolution continue through the year, we’ll have another $500 million available for 2008.”

The program has received 211 applications totaling more than $4.4 billion; 80 have been approved, and 18 are in the queue for $595 milion; 113 have been returned, and the majority of those that were returned were for incompleteness or infeasibility.

The majority of borrowers are currently private companies, but the Program is open as well to local government. It is technology neutral by statute, the portfolio of technologies is diverse: DSL, fiber, fixed wireless — Wi-Fi, WiMAX — and broadband over power line. Some 26% of the loans that have been made were for wireless systems.

“Wireless is a big player for rural America, and as we move into the future, mobility will be a factor,” Ponti-Lazaruk said.

The Program provides a listing of all approved and pending communities as well as of field representatives.

If you apply for a broadband loan, at least 40% of the homes in your project must have no terrestrial service. Further changes will define what will be meant by “rural.” Senate and House versions of the Farm Bill will also impact what the future of the program will be.

Community Connect Grants

While not as heavily funded ($9 million a year), the Community Connect Grant funds projects for single communities that have no broadband service available to them. "Often these are communities where local leaders have gone to incumbents and the incumbents have said, No, I’m not building out to your community, and they come to us and ask for a grant."

In other cases, it’s an incumbent partnering with a local community. The emphasis is on community involvement, and applicants are required to build or rent a community center to give access to people in the community to use the Internet and how broadband will help them, and service must be provided free of charge to all the critical services in the area for a period of three years.

"It’s a great program, and it also creates a new business in town that has to run and provide broadband and service,” Ponti-Lazaruk said. New rules have been implemented to make more towns eligible. You used to have to find yourself on the current census, and some towns were not on the census but existed. If you are on a Rand McNalley map that also includes a population listing, then you can be included and be eligible.

Another $9 million budget — "and hopefully more" — is expected. You do not need hire a grant writer to write a grant, and USDA field representatives can explain the program to you.