Making sense of broadband stimulus - Digital Life Blog - InformationWeek

Vice President Joe Biden is in Pennsylvania today to kick off the Administration's $7.2 billion broadband stimulus program, announcing the release of the federal agency regulations, also known as the Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA), that set eligibility rules. So far, most people have focused on who should be entitled to receive the grants -- large telcos or small ISPs, private companies versus municipal governments -- and incumbent carriers have worked hard to prohibit local governments from operating broadband networks.

The NOFA will settle all those questions, or most of them, and now we get to the part of the process where federal agencies sort through thousands of proposals and start making actual funding decisions. But the real benefits of the broadband stimulus won't come from the actual technology spending. As Peter Pratt writes (and his blog has plenty of useful details for anyone who wants to understand...