Second round stimulus applicants include Motorola, Echostar, and XO Communications

Perhaps the most surprising name among the applicants for Round 2 broadband stimulus infrastructure funds from the National Telecommunications and Information Agency is Motorola, which is seeking $50.5 million for an emergency first responder network in the San Francisco Bay area based on wireless long-term evolution technology. Like other projects seeking funding from the NTIA, the network also would provide connectivity to anchor institutions such as universities and hospitals.

Motorola’s application was among 355 submitted to the NTIA for infrastructure projects in Round 2. The funding requested totaled $11 billion, and applicants offered to commit an additional $4.5 billion in matching funds to support their projects. Applicants are vying for $2.6 billion in infrastructure funding available through the NTIA in this round. All NTIA funding is in the form of grants.

Numerous small telcos and telco consortia applied for grants for NTIA infrastructure projects in this round, as did many municipalities and universities as well as a few utility and cable companies. One of the larger service provider applicants is also one of the most ambitious. XO Communications is seeking $206 million for a network that would serve eight Western and Midwestern states.

Apparently buoyed by their earlier success, several service providers and service provider consortia that won broadband stimulus funding in Round 1 are hoping to earn additional funds in Round 2. Zito Media, Zayo Bandwidth, MCNC and Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative are four first round winners that are seeking funding for new projects in the second round.

Meanwhile, several organizations that were rejected in Round 1 are hoping to have better luck this time.

Echostar is seeking $62.8 million to provide at least 1500 free end user satellite terminals and heavily discounted services to anchor institutions in several states. The company’s Round 1 applications proposed similar terms for individual households.

The University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, representing advanced research networks Internet2 and National LambdaRail, is seeking $62.5 million to interconnect regional research networks to create the Unified Community Anchor Network proposed earlier this year. Several smaller UCAID projects were rejected in Round 1.

And Fairpoint Communications, which had several applications rejected in Round 1, submitted just a single infrastructure application for Round 2 for a $20.5 million network in Maine.

Not found among the NTIA applicants are the largest carriers such as AT&T or Verizon — and Level 3, which won funding from the NTIA in the first round, also opted out this time. It is not yet known if any of these carriers have applied for funding from the Rural Utilities Service, the other agency administering broadband stimulus funds. An RUS spokesman said that organization plans to release information about applicants to its second round program within a few days. A few service providers —including Windstream, Qwest and TDS Telecom — have announced that they have submitted second round applications to the RUS.

The 355 infrastructure applications that the NTIA received were considerably fewer than the 1090 that came in to the agency in Round 1. But that decrease may have resulted largely from a change in rules that now prevent applicants from making identical proposals to both the NTIA and RUS. More than 830 applications in Round 1 went to both the NTIA and the RUS, which then determined which, if either, organization would fund them.