RUS Awards Funds for Broadband; Up to 24 Million Lack Access

August 12, 2010

RTFC Capital Connections | Vol. 22, No. 8

Last week U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the award of $1.2 billion
in broadband infrastructure loans and grants to 126 projects in 38 states. The awards were part of
the second round of the Rural Utilities Service’s (RUS) Broadband Initiatives Program.

“The broadband projects announced today will give rural Americans access to the tools they need
to attract new businesses, jobs, health care and educational opportunities,” Vilsack said. “These
projects will create jobs building these networks, and the completed systems will provide a platform
for rural economic growth for years to come.”

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, RUS and the National Telecommunications
and Information Administration were allotted $7.2 billion to allocate to broadband projects across
the country. Recently, the House of Representatives voted to rescind $602 million of funding from
the programs in a supplemental appropriations bill. The Senate subsequently rejected the House’s
funding cuts, however, and a version of the bill that maintains full funding was signed into law on
July 29. After taking into account the latest awards, RUS said it has $1 billion in remaining funding
authority for broadband loans and grants, which will be awarded by September 30.

In related news, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released the latest in a series of
periodic reports analyzing the state of broadband deployment nationwide. The FCC found that
14 million to 24 million Americans currently lack access to broadband and “the immediate prospects
for deployment to them are bleak.” This indicates the goal of universal broadband availability is
not being met in a reasonable and timely way, the FCC said. That conclusion is a departure
from previous FCC reports, which had said deployment efforts were satisfactory. Notably, the
latest report increases the minimum definition of broadband from 200 kbps per second upstream
and downstream to 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. The FCC’s Sixth Broadband
Deployment Report is available online at www.fcc.gov.

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