I have been digesting the NOFA (the rules for broadband stimulus projects) and I am stunned at just how much I disagree with them. I think the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the Department of Commerce in D.C., and the Rural Utilities Service have really done a disservice to this country. Before I highlight some commentaries that I have found most interesting thus far, I want to note that this is why we take a bottom-up approach. In talking to many people working on community networks, most everyone is frustrated and the rest are really angry. It sure seemed like the feds were heading in the right direction, but the broadband stimulus rules show just how out of touch they are. We advise communities to find ways of being self-reliant. If they are able to get help from D.C., that is great; but they should never depend upon it. We will have some more details of our reaction to the rules soon, but for now I wanted to highlight some of the folks that reacted quickly and offered interesting thoughts. Starting on the positive side, Andrew Cohill at Design Nine thinks the encouragement for open access networks and transparency could ultimately be the defining characteristic.

This means networks that offer competitive pricing from more than one provider get preference--this is huge, and could have important long term consequences. The rules also do something else quite important on the same page (page 66, line 1463), where there is explicit preference for open access transport, which in telecom jargon is "interconnection." The rules say that companies that post their interconnection fees publicly and agree to nondiscrimination will get preference.

If he is correct, the implications are great. However, the rules certainly could have demanded open access as a condition of public money being used rather than a limited form of extra credit for those who will encourage competition in a market suffering the utter lack of it. Harold Feld, who rightly noted that good people struggled and worked on this, saw both positives and negatives in the rules. He defends the "broadband" speed definition from the FCC (768kbps down and 200kbps up):

I am in the minority in thinking they played this right.