The federal government continued its broadband expansion push on Monday by allocating $103 million in funding for projects that will bring high-speed Internet services to unserved and underserved rural areas in 16 states.
The new influx of funding is the most recent step in the Obama administration's goal of rolling out high-speed wireless to 98 percent of all Americans within the next five years. The objective is a major part of the president's plan to create new jobs and rebuild the still-sluggish economy.
Around $90 million of the funding is earmarked for five broadband infrastructure projects across the west. Other grants will help service providers introduce broadband services in areas like Tushka Town, Okla., which was decimated by a tornado in April, and in Orleans, Calif., where 750 members of the Karuk Tribe live in near isolation.
A total of seven grants will help provide broadband services to areas that have suffered deeply from the economic recession.
“Without broadband, rural communities, agricultural producers and business owners face a substantial challenge,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who chairs the White House Rural Council, created by Obama in July. “These loans and grants will bring the benefits of broadband, including new educational, business and public health and safety opportunities, to residents living in some of the most remote parts of our Nation.”
The grants announced on Monday come just six weeks after Vilsack earmarked $192 million in loans for service providers around the country through the USDA Rural Development's Telecommunications Infrastructure Program.
The moves underscore a major change in philosophy in how telecommunications companies plan on connecting rural America. For years, the answer has involved the Universal Service Fund, an $8 billion-plus program that helps subsidize costly phone service in rural locations around the country.
However, the widespread acceptance of VoIP technologies has made this program obsolete, and has led FCC (News - Alert) Chairman Julius Genachowski to state that the fund needs to be retooled to allocate the majority of assets to operators that can provide high-speed Internet services to rural areas, rather than traditional phone service through PSTN networks.
The program “was designed for a world with separate local and long-distance telephone companies, a world of traditional landline telephones before cell phones or Skype, a world without the Internet — a world that no longer exists,” Genachowski said in April at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, DC.
This inevitable evolution toward VoIP will be discussed in great detail at an ITEXPO West 2011 luncheon panel titled, “2018: The Death of the PSTN”. The panel, hosted by TMC CEO Rich Tehrani and moderated by SIP Forum (News - Alert) Chairman Richard Shockey, will discuss the FCC's prospective plan for eliminating the public telephone network by 2018, and give attendees advice on how best to prepare for business in a post-PSTN world.
Click here for more details on the luncheon, set to kick off at 11:45 a.m. on Sept. 13 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell
