Feds offer tips on how to get broadband stimulus

TIMING

All broadband stimulus grants and loans must be awarded by September 2010, and the projects funded must be “substantially complete” within two years. The NTIA, together with the USDA, will hold a series of public meetings to further develop the broadband stimulus process. The next meeting is March 16, followed by one in Las Vegas on March 17 and in Flagstaff, Ariz., on March 18. Additional meetings will follow on March 19, 23 and 24.

The USDA will issue three or four notices of public funding availability (NOFAs), the first of which will come within the next 60 to 90 days, with the timing of subsequent NOFAs yet to be determined.

NTIA will award the grants in three phases, mostly to balance the need to get funding quickly to projects that are ready to go and to allow more grant-writing time for those who need it. Its first NOFA will be issued between April and June of this year. The second will be issued between October and December. And the third notice will be issued between April and June of next year.

The NTIA’s McGuire-Rivera even hinted that the NTIA’s grant distribution process would be more streamlined than the USDA process because unlike the USDA, the NTIA will not adapt an existing program – and existing forms and processes, etc. -- to administer stimulus. Rather, the process will be crafted with the urgency underlying the current stimulus imperatives.

Meanwhile, at its next meeting, held April 8, 2009, the FCC will kick off a public comment process for developing a national broadband strategy by May 22, 2009.