The broadband stimulus marches on

It’s been a busy few days in the broadband world. As many of you probably know, the Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the broadband stimulus program was announced last week, outlining the rules for both the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) and the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). The massive NOFA document is 120+ pages – clearly far too long to re-hash in a blog post – but I did want to talk about a couple of things that stood out to me.

The minimum requirements for speed will be 768kbps down and 200kbps up. These speed definitions may seem low to those of us based in well-served areas – when I first read them, I thought the same thing. However, it’s important to remember there are challenges to bringing high-speed connections to remote areas of the country. For them, 768kbps is a vast improvement over dial-up or no service. The rules also encourage higher speeds where possible, which I was pleased to see. I spoke to Brad Reed from Network World about this last week and he included a few more of my thoughts in an article...