[CAUTION: scare quotes in force] Who remembers seeing Apple's 1984 intro for the Mac? Who can't recall the ubiquitous MS Window's butterfly? Sure. There's a Janus analogy if evah. Media And Democracy Hype too tends to gloss the institutions and policies that furnish popular power. Because supply and demand for "power" is measured in First Amendment "freedoms" -- blog users and ad spend, astronominal PEs and caps. Rarely, articulated in terms of ownership -- public investment and equity in infrastructure that binds assets like fiber miles, spectrum, secure servers, and votes (capital) to the electorate.
The words "broadband" and "public utility" don't connect in DC. Yet Internet usage and "neutrality" (there's a rat's nest), access gaps, 4th Amendement deprivations, "5th column" FOIAs won't abait any time soon, no sooner perhaps than public outrage with Portgate in the theater of market transparency and gubment privitization. Playas over the past 6 years have coupled Gore's message to high profile, high profit legislation and slanders of da foundas' Article I intent ... Qwest ... SBC/ WorldCom/MCI ... Andersen/Accenture ... Enron ... Y/G/MSN ... Medicare Modernization ... frankenATT ... TIA ... NSA ... EMR? eewwwCan Dem's pave the public utility status of broadband?
"We are not going to achieve the President's [sic] goal by putting up barriers to entry," said Lautenberg. "The Internet is not a playground for a privileged few, it is essential resource that all Americans should have access to."
Urban giants SF and Philly are in high-profile development of Utility Building, "free and accessible" public networks. Not Nation building. How about yours? Look here. Is it too small, too broke, too disorganized to play? Do you wonder, why? Don't. The FY2007 budget affirms, sacrificing "community" to prop up FedVC portfolio performance is jess one of the costs of doing business.
Following the hacks following regulatory trails to creative financing that launders the public law which authorized them is damned tedious -- insult atop my duty to digest a 230pg OMB FY2007 "savings" report. Sadly, the "Community Connect" item in the $20.4B discretionary massacre snagged my imagination ...
But OMB po' boy, netizen Stephen Gowdy, founder of StoneBridge Wireless, ersatz Chippewa Tribal member and a $4.25M loan winner in the 2003-round of USDA Broadband Loans and Grants</ ... truly inspired me. </p>
- StoneBridge current posted prices: $899/mo business, $99/mo residential
- Pew memo: Fixed wireless adoption in rural America increased from 1% to 5%, 2002-2005
Search engines being what they are, it's uncertain if StoneBridge was turfed from Community Connect (CC) to FedVC proper. The firm was incorporated in 2000. Its assets, business history, and customer-base at the time Gowdy applied for whatever are not public domain. -- no, I'm not paying for a Hoover report, because Gowdy's boot strap cover by the MBDA claims he couldn't get a $40,000 commercial loan.
The thread of Google-documented sweat leading up to his RUS approval is somewhat less amusing. With the loan and obvious subsequent private equity (could it be Sessions ... I mean ... Satan?), we know Stonebridge acquired regional competitor Nomad Broadband, $2.5M in wireless business equipment and consulting from Isreali-based Alvarion Ltd., (NASDAQ: ALVR), and opened up shop in WI and OK, too. By 2004, StoneBridge claimed to be "Minnesota's largest privately held wireless Internet service provider."
Fed VC to Pat Public: See, our cost of money is NOT equivalent to the free-risk rate. But it does a damn good try at faking it! We backed Gowdy's high-risk venture into rural `community-connectivity' with a 4.57% line of credit. On the other hand, we loan RBS co-op utilities up to $740,000, interest free, so long as the note is secured and an additional 20% supp financing is certified. Of course.
According to the Federal Register, CC is a "pilot program" sheltered by Rural Utilities Service (RUS) umbrella Broadband Loans and Grants program. Total 2002-2005 fund value? $895M. Accordingly, CC useful-life expires FY2006, hence OMB "savings". But RUS first announced its $20M grant authority to promote 'community-oriented connectivity' in 2002. CC was purportedly pure-play grantmaking to organizations in rural communities of 20,000 or less inhabitants with NO broadband provider or services. (This spec turns out to be enough rope to hang the whole loan program ...)
Two still uncontested award conditions especially bugged MarketTrustee: - Non-compete clause for VoIP service that duplicates an incumbent local carrier's voice service
- Operation of a 10-PC community center to provide residents "free access" for 2 years
OK; set aside the non-compete. Two years?? While we spell E-X-I-T, let us ponder that RUS effectively took three years to choose from 300 applications and disburse the 2002 appropriation. 2005 and 2006 appropriations and grants, if any, are not my 18-hour search of public record.
USDA's other grantmaker is the Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program. It has the same purvue as CC. [but, doh] The Advanced Services Division of the USDA Telecommunications Program, not RUS, administrates DLT. Advanced has been managing dollars for 19 years, dispersing combined grants and (secured) loans to rural schools, hospitals, co-ops, muni-services, and tribal organizations in all 50 states. FY 2005, DLT put out $29.4M, average award of $372,279
Hilda G. Leg, FCC Monthly Agenda Meeting administrator, RE: Federal Rural Wireless Outreach Initiative, 6 Aug 2003
What is RUS' role in providing this access? We are a lending agency with a 67-year history of providing the capital necessary for rural America to grow and develop. We are a facilities-based financier, on a technology neutral basis. We finance the infrastructure - the hard assets, if you will, that are required to bring advanced telecommunications technologies to rural subscribers. In our Telecommunications Program, we provide this funding through two primary programs - our Infrastructure Program and our Broadband Program.
Really?