The Key Word For Our National Broadband Plan: Leverage

[Commentary] Given the fact that America's financial resources appear as though they'll never be turned full force towards tackling the broadband challenge, it's likely that our national broadband plan will have to be crafty with how it recommends allocating scarce resources to maximize the impact of the dollars we do have to spend. In other words, the plan must leverage whatever money is available as much as possible. Unfortunately, to date our government hasn't been very good at leveraging taxpayer dollars to create long-term broadband assets that can be built upon and expanded on into the future. The most recent example of this is the broadband stimulus package, where the bulk of the money was given to NTIA to hand out as grants. The only leverage this approach realizes is the 20% local match. In other words, for every dollar of grant we only get $1.25 of broadband. The idea of leverage is also important in terms of encouraging projects that leverage multiple pots of government money as a fully integrated project setup to benefit all facets of a community should qualify for a host of additional funds. Plus we also need to thinking about how to leverage existing assets so that we're not overbuilding capacity if it's not needed. I know for a fact that there are good people in government trying to think about how to solve these problems in these ways. My hope is that as they go about doing so they keep in mind the key word for every time anyone spend taxpayer dollars: leverage.