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Most Recent PostsBroadband on the Slopes
Geoff Daily of App-Rising has concerns about how projects are being chosen for broadband stimulus funds:
Last night CNN aired a story during the Situation Room highlighting two participants in the first round of the broadband stimulus.
The first was Hiawatha Broadband, a terrific rural broadband deployer in southeastern Minnesota. They interviewed a host of people about how the hardscrabble rural towns Hiawatha was aiming to serve don’t have broadband at all, and as a result their public safety is in jeopardy as they have no efficient way to communicate during an emergency. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they’re a poster child for the types of communities the broadband stimulus is intended to help, their application was denied.
Then CNN went up to Bretton Woods, NH, where RUS did find a project it deemed worthy of funding, namely building fiber to 400 skiing chalets. I’d been suspicious about this program already, but CNN put an even finer point on it: only 40 of those homes actually have full-time residents.
