For Broadband Grants, a Question of "Rural" and "Remote"

As the Economic Recovery Grants Center reported recently, demand for the first round of grant funding to develop broadband Internet service in rural and remote areas has greatly exceeded the funding level provided by the Recovery Act. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Rural Utilities Services, which are jointly administering the new program, announced that 2,200 applications requesting a combined $28 billion were submitted in the first competition.

With only $4 billion available to award, NTIA and RUS will clearly need to be selective as they decide which applications to fund. And this selection process has raised questions about the criteria agency reviewers will use to determine which areas are most in need of broadband service. The telecommunications networking trade group publication Light Reading recently reported on the malleable definitions of "rural" and "remote" that NTIA and RUS will use to award funds, and pointed out that many rural applicants might not receive top priority because they don't qualify as "remote." Indeed, a map provided by Light Reading indicates that most of the country qualifies as rural, but not necessarily remote.

For the complete article and map, click here.