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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#0070c0" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#0070C0'>Interesting article (and
very timely to our discussions yesterday):<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#0070c0" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#0070C0'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>WASHINGTON (Dow
Jones)--The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Commerce are on the verge of
publishing guidelines for $7.2 billion in economic stimulus grants for high-speed
Internet projects around the country. A Commerce Department official said
Friday that the agencies are hoping the rules encourage communities to bring
their disparate groups into coalitions - hospitals, colleges, public safety
groups, community centers, etc. "A large broadband pipe allows for lots of
silos in various communities to come together," said Mark Seifert, a
senior adviser at the Commerce Department's telecommunications unit. "We
are trying to incentivize that sort of forward looking thinking for those
communities." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Companies that could
benefit from Internet grants and loans include midsized businesses such as
Level 3 Communications Inc. (LVLT), wireless companies like Sprint Nextel Corp.
(S), and possibly large incumbents like Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) or
AT&T Inc. (T). Large Internet service providers like Verizon, AT&T, and
Comcast Corp. (CMCSA, CMCSK) worry, however, that government grants will be
used to fund competitors in areas where they already have invested.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Seifert said regulators
want to "encourage private investment and competition" in grant
making, signaling that they might at least be open to funding projects in areas
that already have some limited access to the Internet. He didn't
elaborate. Seifert also said people hoping to win Internet grant money
should look to other areas in their communities where economic stimulus money
is being spent, such as road projects. The Transportation Department is
most likely to have in hand "shovel ready" road projects where it would
cost relatively little extra cash to lay Internet cable under new asphalt. The
economic stimulus measure put $27.5 billion toward highway construction.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Seifert also said housing
projects would be a good place for Internet stimulus money. If the Housing and
Urban Development Department is reworking the electrical connections in a
housing facility, why not fund a company or nonprofit to wire those units for
the Internet at the same time? Commerce and USDA share the $7.2 billion
for Internet grant and loans, but the two agencies are hoping to make the
application process a seamless one for people seeking the money. The two
agencies want to produce a common application that will leave the complexities
about the source of the funding to their staffs.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Officials also want to
create an easy-to-use, accessible electronic form for the broadband
grants. "We're trying to simplify this. I want to make sure we
underpromise and overperform," Seifert said. Government grants
traditionally "come with a lot of strings attached," he said.
"Those are things we can't write ourselves out of."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><font size=1 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Seifert spoke at a
conference on broadband policy sponsored by legal publisher Pike & Fischer.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><a
href="http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090619-706738.html">http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090619-706738.html</a></span></font><font
color="#0070c0" face=Arial><span style='font-family:Arial;color:#0070C0'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#0070c0" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#0070C0'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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