Broadband Build-Out: Who Will Run the Show?

Add broadband to the list of controversial provisions of the $900 billion economic stimulus package being debated in Congress. Included in the legislation are plans to spend $8.2 billion on fast Internet connections around the country, but a political row is shaping up over how that money will be spent and by which agency. The current version of the bill dictates that the sum be administered by the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the agency principally responsible for advising President Obama on technology policy. But an amendment to the bill being proposed by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) would split that funding in half, sending $4.1 billion each to the NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service at the Agriculture Dept. "The change is needed to ensure that rural residents are not left behind as critical broadband services are expanded," says a statement from Harkin's office. But critics of the Harkin-Brown plan say the RUS has a checkered history in redressing the lack of broadband access. "That program has not been able to spend its money each year, and the procedures for getting loans and grants are cumbersome and tilted toward incumbent carriers," says Ben Scott, policy director at Free Press.