Telecom lobbyists line up for piece of Obama stimulus

President-elect Barack Obama's frequent use of the words "broadband" and "stimulus" in the same sentence has lobbyists lining up to get a piece of the expected largess in an economic stimulus plan. Telecommunications companies are hoping to benefit from a variety of incentives under consideration, including a tax credit to target rural America, as lawmakers draft an economic recovery plan that could run about $600 billion. The key to any proposal is to prove it will create jobs. "They (lawmakers) are looking at them through the lens of how many jobs will be created," said Jeff Campbell, senior director of technology and trade policy at Cisco Systems Inc., which makes network equipment. Every one percentage point boost in broadband penetration per year is projected to increase jobs by 300,000, assuming the economy is not at full employment, according to a 2007 report by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "The goal is to revitalize rural America by bringing high-tech jobs to replace those lost in manufacturing," said Derek Turner, research director at Free Press, a reform group that introduced its own $44 billion investment plan this week. The Free Press proposal includes a $15 billion broadband infrastructure fund overseen by the Federal Communications Commission and run by the states, and a $10 billion program to issue corporate bonds for broadband-related investment. Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America want Congress to give direct grants to consumers to buy computers and Internet services, rather than "to corporations with a hope and a prayer that stimulus will trickle down to citizens."