Rural broadband vs. red tape

Raul Katz, director of strategy at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and an adjunct scholar at the university's business school, says he's "very confident" that rural broadband deployment could create hundreds of thousands of jobs. But first the federal government has to hand out the $7.2 billion it has earmarked to bring high-speed Internet to underserved areas of the U.S. And that, analysts say, could take many more months. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utility Services, the Department of Commerce and the Federal Communications Commission, will deploy the money. Before broadband builders can get the money, though, the agencies must determine which areas qualify, and exactly how to define broadband. All the money has to be out the door by September 30, 2010. In the past, this time frame might have seemed like fast action for the cumbersome bureaucracies, but in the current economic climate many regard it as hopelessly slow.