No surprises in new broadband stimulus awards

With less than three weeks remaining until they are scheduled to have completed the broadband stimulus awards process, the Rural Utilities Service and the National Telecommunications and Information Agency yesterday announced a combined total of 53 infrastructure awards.

The majority of these — covering 43 projects — came from the RUS, which is focusing on last-mile projects. The NTIA, which is focusing on community anchor networks, made 10 infrastructure awards, as well as 25 awards for public computing centers and sustainable broadband adoption projects. The total value of RUS awards in this announcement was $518 million, and the total value of yesterday’s NTIA awards was $482.4 million.

As in previous announcements, many RUS awards went to small rural telcos for fiber-based projects — although this round did include 10 wireless projects and three that will use hybrid fiber/coax (HFC). Windstream chalked up three more wins totaling $26 million for DSL projects, bringing its total wins to 15 out of 30 applications it submitted for the second funding round.

The largest RUS awards in this round included $66.4 million to Lake County, Minn., for a fiber-to-the-premises network and $64.2 million to Air Advantage for a hybrid fiber and wireless project in Michigan. Many RUS stimulus awards have gone to companies that previously borrowed money through the RUS loan program, and Air Advantage is another example. 

The largest award for a wireless project was $20.4 million to EcliptixNet Broadband for a 4G fixed/mobile network in Washington. Two other wireless winners also were first time winners. DigitalBridge won $800,000 for a WiMax network in Indiana — one of 30 projects for which the company requested funding. And KeyOn Communications, which has been aggressively acquiring wireless companies, won $10 million for a WiMax network in Nevada. To date, that is the only award KeyOn has won, although it applied for a total of 16 projects in this round.

The largest HFC award was $11.4 million to Bulldog Cable Georgia. Other awards for HFC projects were $4.5 million to US Cable of Northern New Mexico and $600,000 to Telecom Cable for a project in Texas.

The infrastructure awards made by the NTIA in yesterday’s announcement were considerably larger, on average, than those made by the RUS and skewed toward government institutions. The largest award was $100.6 million to the Centennial Board of Cooperative Educational Services for a community anchor network in Colorado. Another big winner was the Connecticut Department of Information Technology for a similar project.

The RUS is able to make awards as a combination of grants and loans. Accordingly, the total value of awards it has made to date ($3.6 billion) already exceeds the $2.5 billion in funding given to the agency in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support the program.

All NTIA awards are in the form of grants. The NTIA did not provide a running total of awards it has made to date in this announcement, but by now the agency undoubtedly has awarded a large part of the $4.7 billion for which it is responsible.

As remaining funds dwindle, the odds of winning are looking slimmer for several applicants that requested large amounts of funding but to date have received nothing. This category includes Qwest, which made a single application for $348 million in 14 states and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, which is still waiting to hear on 30 applications it made for a total of $85 million for WiMax projects.