StimulatingBroadband.com 01-29-2010 San Francisco - The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce has today begun to publicly post a listing of the 1,400 applications for broadband stimulus funding which have been rejected to date.NTIA, one of two federal agencies administering the $7.2 billion broadband stimulus program, today has issued significant information updates to the Applications Database portion of the BroadbandUSA.gov site which is the lead public facing online resource for the program.
As of Friday afternoon, 639 records in the database have been updated to show as an "Application Not Funded by BTOP," while 667 records now display the "Status" of "Application Not Funded."
We are not able to confirm at this time the distinction between these 2 status categories, especially since the 667 record universe is listed as "BTOP" as the funding program proposed by their respective applicants. BTOP, the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program is manged by NTIA. We are placing inquiries to the appropriate federal agencies to ask for clarification of this point.
As initially suggested today to us by Washington-based attorney Paul Sinderbrand, none of the listed applications now showing in either "Not Funded" status had been submitted for funding to the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. RUS, with a 60 year legacy of funding rural telecom projects, is the sister agency of NTIA jointly manging the broadband stimulus program. RUS has branded its portion of the overall program the Broadband Inititatives Program (BIP). StimulatingBroadband.com
5 comments:
I think at least some of these where BTOP/BIP applications. I'd assume these are off to the BIP side of the house for potential review
Yes, that is exaclty what it appears to us to be at this point. We are working to confirm that estimate.
This is a tad confusing, Peter.
For clarity, are you suggesting that applications for the BTOP Program that now have "Status: Application Not Funded" are official denials? Or is it your suspicion that these have merely been sent off to other agencies for further review?
'our apologies that the information presented in our first story announcing the newly posted rejection data is a "tad confusing". We were careful to make only the statements we could verify, as we did our first drill into the information.
We didn't publish the data in the first istance, obviously, a federal agency -the NTIA- did.
We will only make definitive statements about data not of our own creation when we can confirm the facts of same, or can validate it using our own analysis. We are engaged in both efforts this weekend. NTIA has issued no explanation of the specifics of the data, hence we are being as careful as possible prior to publishing our analysis.
We think we understand now what see see in the data, and will complete or verification.
The two (2) "Status" categories in the database both relate to Round I applications applied for to the BTOP program of NTIA. We are confirming the relationship of each to "BIP/BTOP" applications, and the universe of applications pending in the BIP only category at RUS.
We will update our published information and analysis when we are certain of the veracity of both. Thanks for your observation. We agree.
'appreciate the comment. Please feel free to comment on any story or other folks' comments themselves.
Thanks for checking-in.
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