Broadband applications outstrip available funds

For every dollar the Feds grant to applicants for rural broadband stimulus funds, six dollars will go begging, at least for now. That may well be the measure of hunger in the hinterlands for high speed Internet access.

All told, communities, organizations, and corporations have filed 2,200 requests totaling $28 billion to the two agencies — the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS), and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) – that have between them $7.2 billion to spend bringing high speed Internet access to largely rural unserved and underserved areas...