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Broadband Stimulus Excludes Urban Areas, Says City CIO

July 8, 2009 By Andy Opsahl

Requirements for broadband money set aside in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will exclude urban areas if language in the federal government's notice of funds available (NOFA) released last week goes unchanged, Steve Ferguson, CIO of San Jose, Calif., told Government Technology this week. He contends the requirements exclude urban cities and urban counties by requiring them to be either "un-served" or "underserved" by broadband coverage.

The broadband stimulus NOFA defines an area as "underserved" if it meets at least one of the following three requirements:

o No more than 50 percent of the households in the proposed area can already have access to "facilities-based, terrestrial broadband service" at greater than 768 Kbps downstream and 200 Kbps upstream.
o An area can qualify if no fixed or mobile broadband service provider advertises broadband transmission speeds of at least three megabits per second (Mbps) downstream.
o An area is also eligible if its rate of broadband subscribership equals 40 percent or less of its households.

An area meets the NOFA's definition of "unserved" if at least 90 percent of its households lack access to "facilities-based, terrestrial broadband service," either fixed or mobile, at the aforementioned minimum speed. The federal Rural Utilities Service and the and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration - the two agencies responsible for managing billions of dollars for broadband -- say a household has "access to broadband" if it can readily subscribe to that service upon request.

Ferguson said virtually no urban area can qualify based on those definitions.

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New Broadband Stimulus Requirements Include Urban Cities

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