The federal government will soon start handing out the first $4 billion from a pot of stimulus funds intended to spread high-speed Internet connections to more rural communities, poor neighborhoods and other pockets of the country clamoring for better access. The challenge is that the government has received $28 billion in requests.
So the reviewers at the Commerce and Agriculture Departments who will award the broadband money must make hard choices. The 2,200 applications each envision something different — more fiber-optic lines, for example, or computer labs or municipal wireless networks. But they all promise that their proposals will create jobs and bring new economic opportunities.
What follows are snapshots of four projects representing a cross section of the broadband stimulus hopefuls. It’s too soon to know which plans will win federal grants or loans, either in this round of funding or in the next, as the total broadband stimulus expands to $7.2 billion. Those that do get picked may not get the full amount they are seeking.
But perhaps one — or more — of these projects has a chance.
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For the Coeur d’Alene Indian tribe in the Idaho panhandle, the stimulus money could mean a lifeline to the outside world.
The tribe is asking for $12.2 million for a ring of fiber-optic lines that could connect up to 3,500 homes on one side of its rural reservation, which is about half the size of Rhode Island.
Right now, the tribe’s landline broadband options are limited. The local cable company has pulled out of the market. And the phone company, Verizon Communications Inc., offers digital subscriber line (DSL) service to just a small slice of the reservation.
Although the tribe launched its own wireless network in 2005 with the help of Agriculture Department funding, that network reaches less than half the reservation and slows to…