[1st-mile-nm] Senate and House differ on broadband stimlus spending approach

[Carroll Cagle]

Bookmark & ShareDaily Yonder

To:  

From:  

Note:  

   

 

Favorites

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

MySpace

Facebook

Google

Live

More ...

 

*	January 29, 2009, 05:17 PM EST 
*	Wall Street Journal


How the Senate and House Differ on Broadband Spending


*	 

By  <mailto:amy.schatz at wsj.com> Amy Schatz

Differences between the two broadband stimulus proposals working their way
through Congress could take a little while to work out, but details of the
plans that have popped up this week offer a map of where things might end
up.

The House and Senate haven't agreed on much about the broadband stimulus so
far, neither the cost ($6 billion in the House, $9 billion in the Senate)
nor Internet speeds ("advanced broadband" in the House clocks in at 45mbps,
while the Senate says "next-generation" broadband is 100 mpbs).

Cable operators aren't thrilled about language in the House and Senate
bills, which sets aside grant money for broadband providers who can provide
100 mbps service, since that would tend to favor phone companies installing
fiber-to-the-home service. 

 "We all want faster speeds. What's the appropriate role of providing
incentives for next-generation architecture?" asked Kyle McSlarrow, head of
the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, in a
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4euQranGBAc> YouTube video posted on the
lobbying group's  <http://www.cabletechtalk.com/> Web site Thursday.

House lawmakers would hand out $6 billion in broadband grants. Half would be
given out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture without speed requirements,
although 75% of the money has to be used in "rural area(s) without
sufficient access to high-speed broadband service."

A quarter of the grant money handed out by the Commerce Department would be
for "basic" broadband service (a.k.a 5 mbps download/1 mbps upload) to
"un-served" areas while the rest would go for "advanced" broadband service
(a.k.a 45 mbps/15 mbps) in "underserved" areas. Wireless providers would
need to offer Internet service with a download speed of at least 3 mbps and
upload of 1 mbps.

The House would leave it up to the FCC to decide how to define un-served and
underserved areas. 

Senators want $9 billion in broadband, half of which would be set aside for
providing service in rural areas. The Senate Finance Committee tacked on
limited tax credits of 10% or 20% to providers offering "current generation"
(a.k.a. 5 mbps/1 mbps) service in rural areas and 20% credit for "next
generation" (a.k.a. 100 mbps/20mbps) service in rural or low-income areas.
The tax credits are relatively small, estimated to cost about $110 million
over 10 years.

Open access, or net neutrality, conditions could be a major sticking point
for phone and cable companies, which don't want significant government
constraints on their network management practices. Right now, companies are
concerned about how "open access" might be defined in the legislation. 

In the House, lawmakers say the FCC would be required to define "open
access" within 45 days of the legislation's passage. Senate lawmakers say
their grants would be dependent on "interconnection and nondiscrimination
requirements."

The broadband spending would also fall on the long-term side of benefits
which may came from the economic stimulus plan. 

The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that much of the spending on
broadband wouldn't really have much of an impact on consumers for several
years. It could take "up to five to seven years" to finish some projects
funded by the $2.8 billion handed out by the Agriculture Department's rural
development broadband program.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/1st-mile-nm/attachments/20090130/afeb163a/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 862 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/1st-mile-nm/attachments/20090130/afeb163a/attachment.gif>