Hey, White House, where's our broadband stimulus money?

The White House has announced the destination of about two percent of the government's $7.2 billion broadband stimulus grant package. "Where's the rest?" everybody's starting to ask. And how do we make up for the funding/investment gap that still remains? Craig Settles says many of the applicants for these grants—cooperatives, schools, and libraries—don't have the kind of back office support that the big telcos and medium-sized incumbents bring to the government grant game, Settles pointed out, and so their applications have been more difficult to evaluate. In addition, just about every proposal filed with the Department of Commerce's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) has received comments from some other party, in many instances a telco or cable company. Many of those statements challenge the claims of the applicant, or "defendant," and have to be considered.