Qwest, NRTC fail to win stimulus funding

The Rural Utilities Service met its September 30 deadline for making all broadband stimulus awards, adding just four more organizations to the winner’s list. Windstream won its 16th award in this funding round out of the 30 for which it applied. The company won $7.3 million for an ADSL2+ project in Arkansas. Digital Bridge Communications, which also made a total of 30 filings, won its second award in this round-- $2.6 million for a WiMax project in Mississippi.

Other winners announced late Thursday were $7.75 million to Arizona Tower Corporation for a microwave radio backbone system in Nevada and $800,000 to the Willard Telephone Company to upgrade a FTTH network in Colorado.

Several companies that applied for substantial amounts of funding have not won anything. This includes Qwest, which filed a single application for $348 million for funding throughout its 14-state territory, and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, which made 30 filings that were complementary with those of Digital Bridge, in which the NRTC is a part owner.

In an address at a conference held by the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) on Friday, RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein said the RUS made a total of 320 awards in the two funding rounds of the broadband stimulus program. Although the stimulus act gave the organization just $2.5 billion to award, the RUS made some awards as combinations of grants and loans, enabling it to award a total of $3.529 billion.

Adelstein also touted the variety of awards made. “In terms of technology, these awards represent the array of options available--from fiber to cable coax, even broadband over powerline--to wireless, from WiMax to LTE—and a wide variety of players,” he told the NATOA conference attendees. “More than half of them will deploy fiber-based systems. And over a third of these projects have a wireless component.”

The RUS was one of two federal agencies, along with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, responsible for administering broadband stimulus funding. The NTIA also met the September 30 deadline for awarding all funds, announcing its final awards early last week.