Tough choices for feds giving out broadband funds

The federal government soon will 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. Each of the 2,200 applications envisions 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.

Lifeline to a rural reservation

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 land-line 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 a crawl whenever too many people get online at once.

Valerie Fast Horse, the tribe’s information technology director, says stimulus money would let the Coeur d’Alene Indians build a network that is “more stable and more reliable” and could deliver faster connections at lower prices.

The tribe’s wireless network currently offers top speeds of 1.5 megabits per second, comparable to standard DSL service available elsewhere. However, it charges users about $100 a month, about four times the standard price. The proposed fiber network would deliver a 20-megabit connection — faster than what most cable subscribers get — for $100 a month. Or tribe members would be able to get a 1.5-megabit connection for $25 a month.

Fast Horse envisions all sorts of uses for the fiber lines, including distance learning. Tribe members already use video conferencing to participate in classes at North Idaho College, about 35 miles away, when the roads are too icy to drive. But that requires them to travel to the tribe’s education center, which has a land-line connection to the Internet. A fiber-to-the-home network would enable tribal members to take classes without leaving their kitchens, she says.

It also would enable Coeur d’Alene members to consult with medical specialists around the country. And it would help the tribe preserve its language and culture by enabling more members to access the tribe’s video-sharing Web site, Rezcast. Among other things, the site features clips of powwows and online tutorials with tribal elders speaking their native language.

Detroit overhaul

Clearwire Corp., a company pioneering the use of a next-generation wireless technology known as WiMax, is upfront that some markets don’t make sense for telecom providers that need to show a profit.

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