Federal grants will flow before national broadband plan is ready

The $7.2 billion in stimulus funding for nationwide broadband development is one of the hottest tickets in town. Two federal agencies are in charge of awarding the stimulus grants, and hundreds of cities, towns and rural communities are making a run on getting the funds. But oddly enough, the grant process is unfolding long before the government's overarching national broadband blueprint is even down on paper.

The Federal Communications Commission, the agency in charge of drawing up the plan, has begun a 13-month development. Unfortunately, it is way behind the timetable to distribute the money, which is expected to begin flowing in the next six months. This has raised questions about whether the Obama administration's plan will end up spending taxpayer money on projects that are not needed and have been created without clear guidelines.

However, the FCC recently upgraded its data for assessing the current status of broadband deployment throughout the nation, and maintains that this will help target the funding to places that need it most. Any way you look at it, this is a project that definitely needs technology to keep track of what's up.

"The new data is a dramatic improvement," said Chris Riley, policy counsel for Free Press, a nonprofit organization advocating national broadband. "Now they have information on how many subscribers there are to each speed of broadband in each census tract."

The new data will help the Agriculture and Commerce departments, the two government entities that will distribute the grants, maintain up-to-date information and target the money properly.

For more on broadband:
- check out this Federal Computer Weekly article