U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

67–823 PDF 2012

OVERSIGHT OF THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND 

REINVESTMENT ACT: BROADBAND 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, 

TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

APRIL 2, 2009 

Serial No. 111–26 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

energycommerce.house.gov 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

Chairman 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

Chairman Emeritus 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

Vice Chairman 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JANE HARMAN, California 

TOM ALLEN, Maine 

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana 

JOHN BARROW, Georgia 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland 

CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

BRUCE BRALEY, Iowa 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

Ranking Member 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

STEVE BUYER, Indiana 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
(III) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

Chairman 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan (ex officio) 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

Ranking Member 

J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico 

CHARLES W. ‘‘CHIP’’ PICKERING, 

Mississippi 

VITO FOSELLA, New York 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING

jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
(V) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Rick Boucher, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth 

of Virginia, opening statement ............................................................................ 1 

Hon. Cliff Stearns, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 3 

Hon. John D. Dingell, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, opening statement ....................................................................................... 5 

Hon. Lee Terry, a Representative in Congress from the State of Nebraska, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 6 

Hon. Donna M. Christensen, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Virgin Islands, opening statement ................................................................. 7 

Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oregon, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 7 

Hon. Doris O. Matsui, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement .................................................................................... 8 

Hon. Marsha Blackburn, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Tennessee, opening statement ............................................................................ 9 

Hon. Anna G. Eshoo, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement .................................................................................... 9 

Hon. Bobby L. Rush, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 10 

Hon. Zachary T. Space, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Ohio, opening statement ...................................................................................... 11 

Hon. Bart Stupak, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 12 

Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement .................................................... 13 

Hon. Henry A. Waxman, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California, prepared statement ........................................................................... 119 

WITNESSES

David Villano, Assistant Administrator, Telecommunications Program, Rural 

Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture .................................................. 14 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 17 

Answers to submitted questions 1 ...................................................................

Mark Seifert, Senior Policy Advisor, National Telecommunications and Information Administration ........................................................................................ 24 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 26 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 145 

Scott Deutchman, Acting Senior Legal Advisor, Federal Communications 

Commission ........................................................................................................... 38 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 40 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 156 

Hon. Rachelle Chong, Commissioner, California Public Utilities Commission .. 43 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 46 

Nicol Turner-Lee, Senior Vice President, External Affairs, One Economy Corporation ................................................................................................................. 54 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 56 

Brian Mefford, Chairman and CEO, Connected Nation ....................................... 62 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 65 

Answers to submitted questions 2 ...................................................................

Jonathan Large, Dan River District Supervisor ................................................... 94 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 97 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
Page

VI 

SUBMITTED MATERIAL

Paper by National Cable & Telecommunications Association, March 17, 2009, 

submitted by Mr. Stearns .................................................................................... 122 

Letter of March 25, 2009, by Mr. Barton and Mr. Stearns, submitted by 

Mr. Shimkus ......................................................................................................... 138 

Statement of Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, March 31, 

2009, submitted by Mr. Weiner .......................................................................... 141 

1 Mr. Villano did not respond to submitted questions for the record. 2 Mr. Mefford did not respond to submitted questions for the record. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
(1) 

OVERSIGHT OF THE AMERICAN RECOVERY 

AND REINVESTMENT ACT: BROADBAND 

THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2009 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, 

AND THE INTERNET, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:35 a.m., in Room 

2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Rick Boucher 

(chairman) presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Boucher, Markey, Rush, 

Eshoo, Stupak, Inslee, Weiner, Butterfield, Matsui, Christensen, 

Space, Dingell, Stearns, Shimkus, Radanovich, Walden, Terry and 

Blackburn. 

Staff present: Roger Sherman, Senior Counsel; Pat Delgado, Policy Coordinator; Tim Powderly, Counsel; Shawn Chang, Counsel; 

Greg Guice, Counsel; Philip Murphy, Legislative Clerk; Sarah Fisher, Staff Assistant; Neil Fried, Minority Counsel; Amy Bender, Minority FCC Detailee; and Garrett Golding, Minority Legislative Analyst. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICK BOUCHER 

Mr. BOUCHER. The hearing will come to order. 

I want to welcome our witnesses this morning and thank you for 

testifying before us today. 

The United States has a unique opportunity, although the circumstances which have brought this opportunity about are unpleasant, and the condition of our economic emergency is dire. The $7.2 billion contained in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for broadband programs is welcome and in fact is 

much needed. The United States is 16th in the world today in 

broadband deployment as measured by the percent of our population that subscribes to broadband, and for the sake of our national economy we have got to be better. Broadband, in my view, 

is as essential an infrastructure today as telephone service or electricity services were when they were introduced more than 100 

years ago and communities that do not have access to broadband 

will lag behind in commercial competition and so it is important 

that we take steps in Congress to develop a national broadband 

plan and we are doing that. It is also very welcome that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $7.2 billion for 

broadband deployment. That, I think, is an important first and 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
2 

properly deployed by the agencies responsible can help elevate our 

standing in the world in terms of broadband usage. 

Congress has widely divided this money between the National 

Telecommunications and Information Administration at the Department of Commerce, which was allocated a total of $4.7 billion, 

and the Rural Utilities Service of the Department of Agriculture, 

which received $2.5 billion. I am very pleased that the Administration is treating these two allocations as two parts of a continuous 

and uniform program. The agencies should work together to ensure 

the maximum amount of consistency in program management and 

development, and it is my understanding that with facilitation 

from the Administration, that is what today they are both doing. 

We will learn more about that this morning. 

The money is among other things to provide broadband service 

including infrastructure and equipment both in unserved and in 

underserved parts of the Nation. Both unserved and underserved 

areas are important and are deserving targets for these expenditures. The statute in fact requires that the program be targeted 

both toward unserved and underserved areas of the country. We 

want to ensure that everyone has access to broadband and we also 

want to ensure that everyone has access to broadband at meaningful speeds and at truly affordable prices and can benefit from competition among service providers. 

For the broadband programs to be truly effective, we also need 

a sensible definition of unserved. We would not, for example, want 

to exclude areas where there is a smattering of broadband service 

but where the service is generally absent throughout the community. As Mr. Large will testify this morning, when agencies define 

‘‘unserved’’ unreasonably and disqualify an entire community from 

a broadband grant program because a single home within that 

community has access to high-speed Internet services, large numbers of people, the entire balance of that community, most of which 

does not have access to broadband, will suffer. 

Similarly, the agencies must craft a definition of ‘‘underserved’’ 

with great care. It is, for example, appropriate to provide support 

where there is currently only one broadband provider and so a community gets the benefit of market competition by another provider 

or perhaps multiple additional providers entering that community 

and then providing that service, and we should not equate underserved only with the absence of competition. Underserved means 

other things as well. It can also refer to communities that have inadequate broadband speeds. A community should not be disqualified from the program because there are multiple providers offering 

broadband with a download speed, for example, of 256 or perhaps 

512 kilobits per second. That is a slow speed and not adequate for 

what most people would consider to be broadband and high-speed 

Internet access. 

And finally, communities where broadband is only available at 

unreasonably high prices should also in my opinion be considered 

to be underserved. 

The NTIA funds are subject to non-discrimination and interconnection requirements and the art of applying this provision will 

be to develop standards that meet a number of separate tests. 

First, are they meaningful and do they ensure open and non-proVerDate Mar 15 2010 04:19 Apr 13, 2012 Jkt 067823 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A823.XXX A823

jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
3 

prietary networks. Secondly, it is important that they not be overly 

burdensome for the providers of the services. And third, can they 

be put into place quickly, and I would suggest that all three of 

these standards should be met. We do not want to deter applicants 

and therefore need definitions that will not inhibit private sector 

providers from applying for this program. If the program is going 

to work truly effectively, we want to encourage a broad range of 

private sector applicants everywhere across the country and the 

standards that are put in place for openness and non-discrimination must be consistent with that objective. 

The programs should also honor the principle of technological 

neutrality that will ensure that we build out our broadband more 

efficiently. The agencies should truly consider all available technologies for broadband offering including wireline, wireless, satellite and point-to-point microwave as appropriate for the terrain, 

for the size of the population that will be served through the 

project and other location-specific factors that are relevant to the 

circumstances. 

I think it is also important to keep in mind that the stimulus 

program contained in the American Recovery Act is not our national broadband policy. As I suggested earlier, it is an important 

first step in getting broadband out to more unserved and underserved areas but the subcommittee is going to be actively involved 

in looking at ways that will achieve truly universal broadband deployment and this stimulus fund, ample as it is, is insufficient to 

achieve that larger purpose. We made a direction in the Recovery 

Act for the FCC to develop within 1 year a national broadband plan 

and this subcommittee looks forward to working closely with the 

FCC as the work is undertaken by the agency to develop that plan 

and produce it within that 1-year period. 

I want to commend the NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service as 

well as the FCC for the tremendous work that these three agencies 

have done so far in developing in these very early stages a plan for 

expending the broadband funds contained in the stimulus measure. 

We will be hearing from our witnesses this morning about that 

progress to date and the future direction that you will be taking 

as the program takes final shape. 

I want to thank you once again for your participation here. We 

welcome your testimony. 

Mr. BOUCHER. At this time I am pleased to recognize the ranking 

Republican member of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Stearns. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CLIFF STEARNS 

Mr. STEARNS. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

your opening statement. I hope there won’t be a test on your opening statement. 

Thank you, and I hope this will be the first in a series of oversight hearings on broadband. Obviously we live in a very exciting 

time. New applications, innovations are created all the time. In a 

relatively short period of time we have gone through primitive computers—I remember the original Mac—to e-mailing to streaming 

video with billions of dollars of investment. The future is very 

bright and we are only limited by our imagination. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
4 

Broadband has the potential to transform our everyday lives 

from how we work, how we receive medical attention and how of 

course we are entertained. Accordingly, we need a long-term investment in broadband infrastructure that is based on free market 

principles and not government run. Broadband technology will spur 

long-term economic growth by creating jobs, fostering innovation, 

increasing international competitiveness and improving the quality 

of life for all Americans. It can fundamentally alter our economy 

so we have obviously a tremendous opportunity. 

Now, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 pro- vides a total of $7.2 billion for broadband, $2.5 billion of which will 

go to the Rural Utilities Service and the remaining $4.7 billion will 

go to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission will 

consult with the NTIA and RUS and develop a national broadband 

strategy. 

I applaud the focus on this type of transformational infrastructure. However, this can only be transformational if done right and 

can provide an enormous long-term economic boost. Unfortunately, 

the haste with which the legislation was drafted and enacted and 

the short time frame the respective agencies are afforded to accomplish their task may prevent the agencies from achieving these 

worthwhile goals as effectively as might otherwise have been possible. The very real risk of course will be that taxpayers dollars are 

once again wasted on another ineffective government program. 

Now, to prevent this, NTIA and RUS and the FCC need to take 

three basic principles into mind when distributing this grant 

money. First, a comprehensive nationwide broadband inventory 

map must be conducted. It is common sense that we should know 

where to spend the money before the money is actually spent. Nationwide broadband mapping may not be complete before the stimulus requires the funds to be spent. However, maps have already 

been completed in a number of States and maps in other States 

may also be finished before it runs out. 

Perhaps we can prioritize funding for projects in States where 

mapping is complete. This can also help to ensure that requests are 

well thought about and provide a valuable incentive to complete 

maps in the remaining States as thoroughly and as quickly as possible. By identifying the areas that currently lack broadband service, the agencies will be better equipped to make decisions on how 

to best spend taxpayers’ money. The likelihood of waste, fraud and 

abuse increases if we act before having the benefit of this information. A ready, fire, aim approach could be bad. 

The second principle is to focus on unserved areas before underserved. We should ensure that everyone gets firsts before others 

are allowed to get seconds and thirds. Allocating funds to underserved areas first could distort the marketplace, either because 

companies will wait for government funding rather than go forward 

with their own investments or will be forced to complete with a 

government-subsidized competitor. 

The third and final principle is that the allocation of broadband 

funding needs to include a strong criteria based on whether a 

project will be sustainable without additional government funding. 

According to the statute, most of the broadband grant money must 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
5 

be awarded by next September and each project must be substantially complete within 2 years of the award. I am reminded of Milton Freeman’s quote when he said, ‘‘Nothing is so permanent as a 

temporary government program.’’ Grant receipts must demonstrate 

that they exist without the generosity of the federal government so 

that in 3 to 4 years we do not need to bail them out. 

As these agencies begin the process to set the rules for the 

broadband grant program, I urge them to follow these three principles and ensure that the rules are technologically neutral. We 

have a tremendous opportunity to boost our economy and transform the way we live. Throwing money indiscriminately at the 

problem will prevent us from accomplishing the long-term economic 

growth broadband investment can deliver and will only cost us 

more money down the line. We cannot let this opportunity pass by. 

It is too important. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Stearns. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Dingell, the chairman emeritus of the full committee, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. DINGELL 

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I commend you for 

holding today’s hearing. These are important matters. I am delighted with your early initiative in ensuring that the broadband 

grants and loans provided in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, ARRA, are subject to adequate and ample oversight. ARRA’s authorization of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, BTOP, at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, NTIA, and a new grant program at the 

Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service represents a 

significant and urgently required commitment on the part of this 

government to building out its broadband infrastructure, which according to an OECD report, ranks a shameful 15th among the 30 

top industrialized economies in the world. Although encouraging 

such technology growth is vital to transforming the telecommunications infrastructure of the United States and preparing it for the 

economic realities of this new century, we must guard against 

doing so in a disorganized fashion, and furthermore wasting taxpayers’ funds on what might degenerate into boondoggles. 

As my time is short, I will confine myself to those activities and 

those agencies subject to the jurisdiction of this committee, namely 

NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission. Much discretion is left to NTIA and FCC in implementing BTOP and I hope 

these agencies will today provide us with detailed information concerning how they propose to prioritize grant applications, the roles 

of the States in the grant process, NTIA’s strategy for consumer 

education, conserving broadband literacy and each agency’s plan 

for combating waste, fraud and abuse in the largest federal 

broadband infrastructure development grant program in the history of the United States. 

Similarly, I would urge both agencies, NTIA and FCC, to move 

expeditiously to define a number of terms left open in ARRA, in 

particular, what constitutes an underserved area, which I believe 

should be based on speed of available connections rather than numVerDate Mar 15 2010 04:19 Apr 13, 2012 Jkt 067823 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A823.XXX A823

jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
6 

ber of service providers in a given area. This is urgent to accomplishing an orderly development of broadband and seeing to it that 

ARRA in fact does work. 

Finally, on a related note, I am curious how the witnesses assembled here today believe the broadband infrastructure created as a 

result of BTOP and RUS programs should be maintained in the future. For example, should the Universal Service Fund also disburse 

funds to make certain that all Americans have affordable access to 

broadband communications. 

I have a matter of personal pleasure and privilege here. I wish 

to note with great pleasure that Mark Seifert is appearing before 

us today as NTIA’s representative. Welcome back, Mr. Seifert. 

Mark was an invaluable and indispensable member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce staff when I was the chairman 

and I can think of no person more dedicated or qualified to administer NTIA’s great responsibility under ARRA. Welcome back, Mark 

Seifert. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Chairman Dingell. 

The gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Terry, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LEE TERRY 

Mr. TERRY. Thank you. I just want to start by thanking you, Mr. 

Chairman, for holding this hearing so that we can get a grasp of 

the programs that I think will be of great benefit, particularly to 

rural America in making sure that they have access to broadband 

like most other parts of America, and I also want to thank Mr. 

Villano and Mr. Seifert for briefing staff members this week. Bart 

Stupak and I have the honor of being the co-chairs of the Telecom 

Taskforce of the Rural Caucus. I appreciate your efforts there. 

What we have lacked in Congress, well, as a Nation, is a real 

true broadband policy. We barely have been even able to come together to define broadband, let alone a policy of getting it out to 

the consumers and our constituents. I think between the chairman’s and mine USF reform bill and now this $7.2 billion going to 

NTIA and RUS, puts us in a position where we really have to develop that policy now. I am not sure technically you put the money 

before the policy but whatever gets us the policy, I guess that is 

what we are going to embrace. 

So now we are going to have to develop the definition of 

broadband, what the speed is, what is unserved and underserved. 

I think the chairman did a great job of outlining the multitude of 

questions that must be answered rather quickly by these two entities. My hope is that we see coordination between the two entities 

so you are working off of the same playbook and we don’t have 

funds that compete against each other. With limited funds, I think 

it would be poor policy to have competing agencies, government entities, funding competitors in a small rural area. So I appreciate 

your efforts in that case and I want to hear how those efforts are 

progressing to make sure that there is a playbook from which all 

are running the same plays. 

So with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Terry. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
7 

The gentlelady from the Virgin Islands, Ms. Christensen, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN 

Ms. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As it is this committee’s responsibility to monitor the progress on the portions of 

the ARRA over which we have oversight, I want to take this opportunity to thank Chairman Boucher and Ranking Member Stearns 

for holding this timely hearing. 

As a person of color and one who represents an area that generally is considered rural, which has a high rate of poverty and is 

largely unserved, I am pleased that the tone of almost all of the 

testimony that has been submitted focuses on reaching the 

marginalized communities and bridging the digital divide. 

I want to draw attention as we prepare to disburse these funds 

to some of the unique circumstances of our Nation’s territories: one, 

our small market size; two, the more than two times higher cost, 

sometimes as high as eight times higher cost, of deployment due 

to a number of factors, the need for additional mitigation funds because of our propensity for hurricanes and even earthquakes, and 

we are pleased to see that there is such collaboration actually between the three agencies. It is our hope that the definition of 

‘‘unserved’’ and ‘‘underserved’’ will be helpful and forthcoming 

shortly and that there will be neutrality so that all forms of transmission will be equally able to access funds either singularly or together. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I return the balance of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Christensen. 

The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Walden, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate 

it and I will say in advance, I have a conflicting set of scheduling 

issues today so I have to leave a little before 10:30. 

I appreciate your holding this hearing and I think this oversight 

is especially important. I was the one who raised issues about the 

timing of the process leading up to how this money will be spent 

and so I will have some questions for the witnesses. I would like 

to know, for example, from NTIA and FCC how the agencies will 

balance costs to time to deploy broadband speed, affordability of 

the service, all those sorts of things. I think it is important to get 

some adequate level of broadband underserved and unserved markets and say the 1 to 3 megabit rate as opposed to waiting a long 

time to get the gold-plated service out there perhaps. Reasonable 

access to broadband at reasonable speeds I think is really important. 

I represent a district that is 70,000 square miles and probably 

represents some of the most unserved areas and so of course part 

of my passion is, how do we make getting broadband out to those 

unserved areas a priority, I think our ranking member addressed 

that as well, as opposed to bringing the third, fourth, fifth, sixth 

service into a market that already has it and so these definitions 

really do matter, and I wonder if you would agree that all compliVerDate Mar 15 2010 04:19 Apr 13, 2012 Jkt 067823 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A823.XXX A823

jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
8 

ance requirements associated with USF funding need to be known 

by the applicants prior to the funding being awarded. We are having quite the mess of it around here, and after the TARP vote and 

after the stimulus vote and a few other things, trying to figure out 

what we expected out of companies that took the money and what 

we didn’t and now we are in this whole retroactive effort, which is 

sort of disgusting, and so I look forward to reading your testimony 

and hearing from you on these matters. 

And finally, I know I have been in conversations with my own 

State public utility commission and they had a proposal I think nationally to take a tranche of the money, pool it and be responsible 

for it to get it out there in areas where they know it could be properly used and I would be curious to get your reaction to that concept as well. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank our panelists for their testimony. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Walden. 

The gentlelady from California, Ms. Matsui, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DORIS O. MATSUI 

Ms. MATSUI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much 

for calling today’s hearing. I would also like to thank the witnesses 

for appearing before us today. 

We are here to examine the efforts by NTIA, the FCC and RUS 

in carrying out the broadband programs established by the Recovery Act. As our economy continues to face unprecedented challenges, it is clear that we must invest in new, sound national 

projects to get people back to work immediately. The economic recovery package that Congress passed in February includes a number of strategic investments that will create new jobs and expand 

our economy. In particular, the package included a $7.2 billion investment in our Nation’s broadband system that will be administered by NTIA and RUS for new grant, loan and loan guarantee 

programs. This investment will improve access to broadband in 

unserved and underserved areas and to increase the adoption of 

broadband by public safety agencies, schools, libraries and medical 

providers. 

It is no secret that our country has progressively fallen behind 

much of the industrial world in broadband access. For the Nation 

that invented the Internet, this is simply unacceptable. I am 

pleased that the Administration recognizes the importance of investing in the next generation of broadband technology and infrastructure as a critical element of economic development and growth 

for the United States. It will also lead to new well-paying jobs. 

Leading economists estimate that investment in broadband infrastructure will create thousands and thousands of good jobs 

throughout this country. Moreover, a recent Department of Commerce study revealed that communities with broadband added one 

percentage point to the employment growth rate in that particular 

area. Broadband expansion is a strategic investment that will benefit the education of our children, the delivery of health care and 

will provide the impetus for future growth of our great country. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
9 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing 

today and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Matsui. 

The gentlelady from Tennessee, Ms. Blackburn, is recognized for 

2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN 

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome to our witnesses. We are glad that you are here because 

we know we are going to have to work together to make certain 

that broadband is expanded in this country. We had some legislative timeline and goalposts in the language that was passed. We 

know that the stimulus was a very confusing deal. It is confusing 

for our constituents. But reviewing those timelines, this is kind of 

what we know and I think where I am going to want to proceed 

with some of my questioning. The NTIA must complete a national 

broadband map by 2011, and we know that the Broadband Data 

Improvement Act enacted last year has a separate mandate for 

NTIA to compile this within 2 years. So we have got a little bit of 

conflict there. We know the FCC must unveil a national broadband 

plan by February 10, so we are all on different timelines, and then 

we have the NTIA and the RUS that must finalize and distribute 

the lion’s share of the grants by September 30, 2010. Key terms 

will determine who is eligible to receive grant funds and where 

those funds can be used including broadband and unserved and underserved areas and so we will want to talk about that a little bit. 

And finally, NTIA and RUS expect to release the first round funding availability notices before the end of the summer. 

So I am curious about what this is going to mean for grant applicants who consider a grant proposal to the federal agencies being 

tasked with administering all of these programs because they know 

it is going to be a lot of work and I think they are trying to figure 

out if the work is going to be worth it, and a lot of the work is 

going to take place—you all are going to do a lot of the work. It 

is going to take place outside of our direct control. And sometimes 

I know that makes those of us in Congress a little bit nervous and 

it does me, and I couldn’t help but think of that as I read Mr. 

Large’s testimony about what had transpired in Patrick County, 

Virginia. I have counties that are similar to that and I am going 

to be interested in hearing from you. 

Thank you for the time, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Blackburn. 

The gentlelady from California, Ms. Eshoo, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ANNA G. ESHOO 

Ms. ESHOO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for organizing today’s 

hearing on the $7.2 billion that is going to be expended on 

broadband from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 

That Act was really aptly named because this is an investment 

and it is going to help us recover from the position, the standing 

that we have in the world relative to broadband which depending 

on whose survey you look at, we are either 14th, 15th, 16th or 17th 

in the world with Latvia, Slovenia and a whole host of countries 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
10 

that are ahead of us. That is not a good record. It is less than a 

20th century record, much less a 21st century record. 

There are some of us that were contacting the House leadership 

before the November elections in anticipation of what the outcome 

would be that broadband be addressed in the stimulus package. So 

I am very pleased that these monies were approved. Now, how are 

they going to be spent, how efficient, how effective, what is the 

reach and where it will take us. I think it is a very important first 

step. I for one do not consider this a prescription that is going to 

catapult the United States of America into position number one. 

But it is an important first step, so I welcome it. I think restoring 

our competitive edge in this area is a must. It is an imperative. It 

is an urgent priority for our country because the reach is so far 

with broadband. 

But how we do this is really going to be important and so the 

witnesses today I think are going to teach us something or try to 

instruct us. There is an example in California, the California 

Emerging Technology Fund, and it was established to accelerate 

adoption of broadband in unserved and underserved areas, and I 

want to extend a special welcome to Commissioner Chong, who is 

so highly respected in California, known nationally as an expert in 

telecommunications policy and the architect of the broadband map 

of California, which she completed in 6 months. So we need to 

learn from you and out of that take the lessons of how best these 

dollars can be applied so that we can then move on, I think, to 

other steps. If we bungle this, most frankly, if this $7.2 billion is 

bungled, I don’t think the Congress and the American people are 

going to have confidence in our moving no to take the even larger 

steps for deep and broad penetration and higher speeds in our 

country. 

So welcome to all the witnesses. It is great to see you, Commissioner Chong. And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Eshoo. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Radanovich, is recognized for 

2 minutes. 

Mr. RADANOVICH. Thanks, Mr. Boucher. Mr. Chairman, I will 

pass on my opening statement for questions. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Radanovich. There will 

be 2 minutes added to your time for witness questioning. 

The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Rush, the chairman of the Consumer Protection Subcommittee, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOBBY L. RUSH 

Mr. RUSH. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and commend 

you for holding this very, very important and strategic hearing. 

Mr. Chairman, if the stimulus package is going to be as effective 

as we think and hope it will be, Congress will play an important 

oversight role in its implementation. So I want to thank you again 

for holding hearing. My focus would be on the provision in the 

broadband title of the stimulus package that requires NTIA to consider whether a potential candidate for grant money is a ‘‘socially 

or economically disadvantaged business’’ as defined under section 

8A of the Small Business Act. This provision was an amendment 

that I introduced during markup and I sincerely want to thank my 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
11 

Democratic and Republican colleagues for accepting the amendment and I also want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Chairman 

Waxman and the committee staff for fighting to conserve this particular provision during conference with the Senate. This mandate 

is not only important to me but it is important to all the womenand minority-owned businesses out there that continue to face 

steep barriers when trying to compete in the telecommunications 

market. 

Mr. Chairman, since I have been on this committee, I have insisted that more diversity is needed in this multibillion-dollar industry. I intend to closely monitor how this provision is being implemented. I do not want to see the same indifference we have seen 

in the past on these matters. 

In this regard, I am very pleased and excited to see our former 

colleague and friend, Mark Seifert, at NTIA in charge of this important grant program. I want to associate my comments along 

with the comments of the Chairman Emeritus Dingell as it relates 

to Mark. Welcome, Mark. We certainly are happy to see you. Under 

Mark’s leadership, I am confident that these grants can play a significant role in helping small, women- and minority-owned business create jobs and deliver advanced telecommunications services 

to the American public. 

Again, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance 

of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Rush. 

The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Space, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ZACHARY T. SPACE 

Mr. SPACE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I was delighted to find that the total amount of money devoted 

to the expansion of broadband in unserved and underserved areas 

was as high as it is. It is a lot of money and the money is there 

for a very good cause. I come from a rural district like many other 

members of the committee here and we face a lot of challenges and 

disadvantages that oftentimes go overlooked. Whether it is access 

to health care, whether it is access to education and certainly access to technology, it puts us at extremely disadvantages, not just 

with respect to economic development, which is obviously very important, but also with respect to basic and fundamental quality-oflife issues. Certainly health care and the role that broadband plays 

in health care delivery is significant. Telemedicine is something 

that we all understand can bring quality health care to rural areas. 

It is a way to help bridge that gap. Distance learning, a way to 

bridge the gap and some of the disadvantages that rural America 

suffers from. 

So this is an exciting and bold opportunity for us. In my district, 

this is a map of the State of Ohio. Connect Ohio prepared these 

maps. And if you will notice this large gray area in southeastern 

Ohio, that is my district. It is a glaring hole in Ohio and it is one 

that causes the people that I represent to suffer. It is one of the 

reasons we have some of the highest unemployment rates in the 

State of Ohio. We have one of the highest poverty rates in the 

State of Ohio. It is one of the reasons we have tens of thousands 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
12 

of people who work every day yet remain in poverty, the working 

poor. We need to bridge that gap, and I have been working very 

hard to do that. We have got a great opportunity now with these 

stimulus funds. 

The plan that I have developed is one which consists of four components. The first is expanding on the southern Ohio health care 

network fiber backbone that the FCC funded last year. The second 

stage covers the rural expanse via wireless coverage. The third is 

increasing industrial park connectivity and the fourth, expanding 

telemedicine. The limitations on my time prohibit me from expanding upon that but suffice it to say that we have received the backing and the cooperation of the governor, the numerous local development districts in the region, county commissioners. This plan 

covers five Congressional districts and it is absolutely vital to bring 

these people that we represent up to a relatively level playing field. 

I also look forward to working with Mr. Seifert, and while we 

have not met, I am well aware of your qualifications and would 

echo what Chairman Rush and Chairman Dingell have already 

iterated about your qualifications, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, 

and apologize for extending my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Space. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Stupak, chairman of the 

Oversight Subcommittee, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BART STUPAK 

Mr. STUPAK. Thank you, Chairman Boucher, for holding this 

hearing. I would like to start off by expressing my thanks to RUS 

and NTIA staff, especially our witnesses David Villano and Mark 

Seifert, who came to Capitol Hill this past Monday to speak at the 

first Rural Caucus staff briefing. I would also like to thank Chairman Waxman’s staff for accommodating the Rural Caucus by providing this hearing room and thank Congressman Terry for cochairing the Rural Telecommunications Taskforce with me and for 

his help in putting together this briefing. 

As co-chairs of the Rural Telecommunications Taskforce, we felt 

it was important to have the Administration provide rural members with an early opportunity to hear the latest developments in 

the broadband stimulus program. Nearly 100 Congressional staff 

members turned out for the briefing, demonstrating a high level of 

eagerness and anticipation from rural America. That is because 

broadband access gives our businesses the ability to compete in a 

global economy, gives our students an education for tomorrow’s 

workforce and it gives our health care facilities the ability to provide better health care through telehealth. 

Broadband access is as fundamentally important to quality of life 

in today’s world as electricity was in the 1930s. It is a utility for 

my constituents, not a luxury. So it is my hope with more than $7 

billion in funds we have provided to the Departments of Commerce 

and Agriculture, that we can take a significant step forward in 

reaching universal access. I fully believe that we should implement 

this program effectively. It will lay a foundation for our country’s 

economic recovery as well as its future prosperity. I look forward 

to discussing with our witnesses how we can work together to effectively deploy throughout our Nation. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
13 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding today’s hearing. I was 

down at the cable show, as I know many of our other colleagues 

were, and they have already spent the money a couple times over 

in the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act but that will be 

our decision to see how it is implemented and I hope we do it effectively, and the cable show is quite interesting and they gave us 

their view of it but we have to be efficient and make sure that the 

money is used efficiently and conveniently for all Americans, especially those of us in rural areas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Stupak. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey, former chairman of this subcommittee, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, so much and thank you 

for having this hearing, and welcome back to Mark Seifert. We welcome you to the place where you served so well and so long, and 

actually I think you are in the right place right now. You can now 

implement a lot of the things that we were doing on this committee 

over the last 2 or 3 years and there is no one better qualified than 

you, and Commissioner Chong and all the rest of our distinguished 

panelists, thank you for being here as well. 

You know, one of the things that unfortunately was lost over the 

last 8 years was that broadband deployment and speed, access and 

pricing is really a proxy for an economy of a country and we 

dropped from number two to number 15 in the world during that 

8-year period. Unfortunately, that has a correlation with the path 

that our economy has taken and so this stimulus bill was a way 

for us to look at a plan that we could put together to ensure that 

the unserved and the underserved, rural and urban, were dealt 

with in a way that gave them access to this essential tool in the 

economic growth of our country so that their skill sets could be 

used in the best possible way. And that is why, you know, the $350 

million which is in this bill to do a map of America. What is the 

broadband map of our country? What is our problem? Who has it? 

Who doesn’t? What is the speed? How much does it cost? Where is 

it? That $350 million is essential to just diagramming the program, 

the problem that we have, and when we complete that map and 

this money is spent, I think we will have gone a long way towards 

solving the problem, and I think Mr. Chairman, making this a top 

priority is really just part of your vision for this subcommittee and 

I think that the implementation of this bill, its oversight will largely determine long-term American competitiveness and I thank you 

for holding the hearing. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Markey. 

The gentleman from Washington State, Mr. Inslee, is recognized. 

Mr. INSLEE. I will waive, Mr. Chair. Thank you. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Inslee waives his opening statement, and the 

gentleman from New York, Mr. Weiner, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

Mr. WEINER. I waive my opening statement. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Weiner also waives his opening statement. 

We now turn to our panel of witnesses and I again want to welcome each of them to our subcommittee this morning and commend 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
14 

you at the outset on the outstanding work you are doing at the 

agency level in order to implement the Recovery Act. Mr. David 

Villano is the assistant administrator of the Telecommunications 

Program and Rural Development for the Department of Agriculture. Mr. Mark Seifert, who has been acknowledged in his presence here by many members of this subcommittee, and I want to 

add my thanks to Mr. Seifert for his outstanding service when he 

was here in the Congress and congratulate him upon his new position. I agree with Mr. Markey, he is very well situated in this new 

role. He is the senior policy advisor for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. He was previous staff for 

this subcommittee as a detailee from the FCC. Mr. Scott 

Deutchman is acting senior legal advisor at the Federal Communications Commission. The Honorable Rachelle Chong is a commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission. Ms. Nicol Turner-Lee is the senior vice president of external affairs at One Economy. Mr. Brian Mefford is chairman and CEO of Connected Nation. 

And I want to welcome my constituent and close personal friend, 

Mr. Jonathan Large, who is a member of the Patrick County Board 

of Supervisors in southwestern Virginia representing the Dan River 

District and has a truly compelling story this morning about how 

current restrictions within the existing grant programs have disqualified a community from receiving broadband where the vast 

majority of residents in that community do not have access to that 

service. It is a cautionary tale that suggests to us that better 

standards are needed as we go forward with the new stimulus program. 

Without objection, the prepared written statements of all of our 

witnesses will be made a part of the record. We would welcome 

your oral summaries and ask that you keep those summaries to approximately 5 minutes so that we will have time for questions. Mr. 

Villano, we will be happy to begin with you. 

STATEMENTS OF DAVID VILLANO, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROGRAM, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; MARK 

SEIFERT, SENIOR POLICY ADVISOR, NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION; 

SCOTT DEUTCHMAN, ACTING SENIOR LEGAL ADVISOR, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION; HON. RACHELLE 

CHONG, COMMISSIONER, CALIFORNIA PUBLIC UTILITIES 

COMMISSION; NICOL TURNER-LEE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, ONE ECONOMY CORPORATION; 

BRIAN MEFFORD, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, CONNECTED NATION; AND JONATHAN LARGE, DAN RIVER DISTRICT SUPERVISOR 

STATEMENT OF DAVID VILLANO 

Mr. VILLANO. Thank you, Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member 

Stearns and members of the subcommittee for the opportunity to 

discuss USDA’s telecommunication program and in particular implementation of the broadband provisions of the American Recovery 

and Reinvestment Act of 2009. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
15 

Rural broadband is of vital importance to expanding economic opportunity and improving the quality of life in rural America as well 

as improving the U.S. economy as a whole. We appreciate the continuing support of the President and Congress for that mission 

through the provision of $2.5 billion in ARRA funding as well as 

over $1 billion in fiscal year 2009 appropriations for existing telecommunications programs. 

USDA Rural Development has extensive experience in supporting rural communities with critical infrastructure and economic 

development initiatives. We administer over 40 programs, providing funding for water and wastewater, electric, telecommunications, housing, essential community facilities, renewable energy 

and business development. At Rural Development, we are truly 

committed to the future of rural communities. 

2009 marks the 60th anniversary of USDA’s telecommunications 

programs. Since the program began in 1949, USDA has provided 

over $20 billion in telecommunications loans and grants in rural 

America. As with electricity under the REA, there was a need for 

a low-cost source of financing to enable rural telephone companies 

to affordably serve low-density areas. USDA loans achieve that 

goal, thus improving significantly the quality of life for rural residents and facilitating economic development in rural communities. 

Rural broadband is the next evolution of the 60-year commitment 

to rural America. It is as essential to rural businesses and economic development today as was the provision of rural electric and 

telephone service in an earlier era. 

Currently, USDA administers four major telecommunication loan and grant programs with a $4 billion portfolio. These programs include our Infrastructure Loan Program, our Broadband Loan Program, Community Connect grants, and distance learning and telemedicine loans and grants. All these programs create or leverage 

investment in broadband infrastructure. Since 1993, we have required that all telecom infrastructure that we finance be broadband 

capable. Because of this investment, our rural telephone borrowers 

have widely deployed broadband service in their service territories. 

In 2001, we implemented a pilot broadband program and in both 

2002 and 2008 Rural Development received authority under the 

Farm Bill to administer a broadband loan program. Despite our experience, Rural Development has challenges in implementing our 

broadband program. The historical model provided by the electric 

and telephone programs did not translate easily to broadband. 

Rural electric and basic telephone service were built out in an earlier era of relatively stable technologies and a natural monopoly environment and on the realized assumption of essentially 100 percent take rate. All these factors are quite different in the 21st century broadband arena. 

As a result, both our staff and the service providers had a steep 

learning curve. We recognized these challenges and published a 

proposed rule in May of 2007. This rulemaking action, however, 

was delayed to the 2008 Farm Bill legislation which proposed significant changes to the program. Our new regulations implementing the 2008 Farm Bill have been drafted and are in departmental clearance. This rulemaking action will address the changes 

presented in the 2008 Farm Bill and the challenges identified by 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
16 

the industry, Congress, our inspector general and our own internal 

analysis. We expect these regulations to be published as an interim 

final rule within the next 60 to 90 days. 

Despite these challenges, we are pleased to report that our programs have had countless success bringing broadband service to remote, rural and unserved areas, for example, Rose Hill, Virginia. 

We provided a broadband grant to serve this community with a 

population of 714 individuals in the central Appalachian Mountains 

of southwestern Virginia. The project provided fiber to this 

unserved and very isolated area. The results to date, we have had 

more than 450 participants that have attended computer and Internet training workshops at the community center that was funded 

by the project and more than 115 households and businesses have 

been connected with broadband service. 

Another example is the Havasupai Reservation, which is located 

in a remote rural area at the southwest corner of the Grand Canyon. Mail and food for the reservation are brought into the canyon 

by mule trains several times a week. The Havasupai Tribe was 

awarded a Community Connect grant in 2004. The grant also funded construction of a community center which provides free 

broadband service to trial members. The Supai Canyon had a flash 

flood in 2008 and communication between the tribe and the outside 

world relied heavily on broadband service made possible with this 

grant. 

One of our latest loans in our broadband program is IBEC. IBEC 

was awarded loans to work with rural electric cooperatives to install broadband over power lines to provide Internet access to thousands of rural residents in six States across the United States. Recently IBEC started providing support to the Cullman Electric Cooperative for their smart grid project using broadband over power 

line at a substantial cost savings over previous methodology. IBEC 

has also recently entered into a partnership with IBM to further 

advance its cutting-edge technology to the smart grid. 

At Rural Development, we have the experience, staff and processes in place to implement the Recovery Act within the challenging timeframes provided. Not only do we have dedicated Rural 

Utilities staff, we also have thousands of dedicated Rural Development personnel throughout rural America ready to assist with the 

delivery of this program, and we are not going to do it alone. We 

have been working very closely with NTIA and FCC on a comprehensive approach. We are confident that together with our partners we will deliver a new program that will successfully deploy 

broadband service in rural America. Mark Seifert from NTIA is 

going to talk a little bit of our joint efforts, our public meetings and 

our request for comments but I can assure you that we are working 

very closely with NTIA and FCC in deploying this program. 

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss Rural Development’s 

implementation of the broadband provisions of the Recovery Act 

and we welcome any questions of the committee. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Villano follows:] 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
17 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 24 67823A.001
18 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 25 67823A.002
19 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 26 67823A.003
20 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 27 67823A.004
21 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 28 67823A.005
22 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 29 67823A.006
23 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 30 67823A.007
24 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Villano. 

Mr. Seifert. 

STATEMENT OF MARK SEIFERT 

Mr. SEIFERT. Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member Stearns, 

Chairman Emeritus Dingell and members of the subcommittee, it 

is indeed a pleasure and honor to appear before you this morning. 

You have some of the finest staff on the Hill, and I have great affection and respect for my friends and colleagues on this subcommittee. 

Thank you for this opportunity to testify on the implementation 

of the Recovery Act’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, or as we call it, BTOP. President Obama believes in the 

transformative power of broadband. Broadband is about jobs. It 

serves as an engine of economic development, enabling communities and regions to develop and expand job-creating businesses 

and institutions. Through the BTOP grant program and in coordination with the Department of Agriculture’s grants and loan programs, we are taking a critical first step in realizing President 

Obama’s vision of broadband for all of America. 

The Administration has set five goals for the broadband stimulus 

funding. First, we want to create jobs. Second, we want to begin 

to close the broadband gap in America by bringing high-capacity 

pipes closer to users in rural, remote and underserved communities. The Administration and Congress agree that the public interest requires these publicly funded high-capacity pipes should operate in conformity with basic principles of openness which will 

spur competition and bring better service to more people and businesses. Third, we want to stimulate investment by requiring grantees to invest their own funds. We want broadband grant applicants 

to look to other sources of Recovery Act funds to find synergies 

such as those at HUD, HHS or the Department of Energy. Fourth, 

these grants should ensure that more anchor institutions have 

high-speed access, anchor institutions like schools, libraries, community colleges, hospitals and public safety. And finally, we want 

to encourage the demand for broadband. When more people understand how broadband access can help them find new ways of making a living, we are sure they are going to want to have it for themselves. 

Now, the statute provides several important goals for BTOP such 

as accelerating broadband deployment in underserved and 

unserved areas, improving access for public safety, providing funds 

for broadband education, awareness, training, access and support 

to anchor institutions as well as to those organizations that provide 

broadband assistance to vulnerable populations, the access that we 

should also stimulate demand for broadband economic growth and 

job creation, and as directed by the Act we are consulting with the 

States. We are also consulting with the FCC about a variety of 

issues including the very important project which many of you 

have mentioned in your statements, our national broadband mapping program. We are working closely with our colleagues at RUS 

to make these programs as seamless as possible for applicants. We 

believe accountability is extremely important. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
25 

One of our first actions was to transfer the $10 million to the IG 

and his staff. We want to ensure that the program design incorporates appropriate safeguards to protect taxpayers’ investment including measurements of success for both individual applicants and 

for the program overall. Because these grants will not resolve all 

of the issues of broadband deployment, we envision these grants as 

a test bed or a proof of concept for sustainable, viable and scalable 

projects. We are encouraging partnerships between small businesses, municipalities and others that may demonstrate non-traditional but effective ways of getting broadband into communities. 

When the economy recovers, and it will, these proof-of-concept 

projects should show future investors the way forward. 

Now, public input is critical to the success of this program. We 

have asked the public how they believe we should invest their 

money in the program. We also want to give the public maximum 

visibility into the results. To that end, we have held six public 

meetings and two in the field at Las Vegas and Flagstaff. These 

meetings were webcast and those that could not attend in person 

or via the Internet could join us on a teleconference. We have an 

active public comment cycle, which closes April 13. As part of our 

efforts toward great transparency, detailed information about both 

the applications and the awards will be posted on our website. The 

NTIA is currently staffing up to address this responsibility. We are 

adding to our core team of experts, who have significant grantmaking experience, and we are standing up the technical systems 

to handle a large volume of applications. 

We anticipate publishing our final rule, known as a Notice of 

Funds Availability, or NOFA, in the next few months. The NOFA 

will describe the application process, the evaluation criteria and 

grantees’ reporting responsibilities. We are contemplating three 

waves of funding spread out over the next 18 months. We believe 

this approach will afford the greatest number of applicants an opportunity to participate. 

Now, we face many challenges in the upcoming months. By far, 

our greatest challenge, however, will be the selection of those 

projects that would be funded. Our task is to design a program that 

is transportable, fulfills the statute’s goals and that results in 

grant projects that wisely invest the people’s money to create jobs 

and offer models of future investment to accelerate the deployment 

of broadband. 

We are committed to ensure that BTOP funds are awarded and 

distributed in a prompt, fair and efficient manner. We look forward 

to getting stimulus funds into the hands of those who can use them 

to create new jobs and promote broadband deployment in unserved 

and underserved areas. 

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Seifert follows:] 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
26 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 34 67823A.008
27 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 35 67823A.009
28 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 36 67823A.010
29 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 37 67823A.011
30 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 38 67823A.012
31 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 39 67823A.013
32 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 40 67823A.014
33 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 41 67823A.015
34 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 42 67823A.016
35 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 43 67823A.017
36 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 44 67823A.018
37 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 45 67823A.019
38 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Seifert. 

Mr. Deutchman. 

STATEMENT OF SCOTT DEUTCHMAN 

Mr. DEUTCHMAN. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Boucher, 

Ranking Member Stearns and members of the subcommittee. I am 

pleased to be here to discuss the Commission’s role in the 

broadband programs established in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. 

I first want to commend the subcommittee, Congress and the 

President for recognizing the importance of broadband to our Nation at this critical time. As the country seeks to maintain, restore 

and develop its infrastructure, it is imperative that we look towards building out broadband, which is the infrastructure we need 

to succeed in the Digital Age. As FCC Acting Chairman Copps like 

to say, broadband is the great infrastructure challenge of our time, 

and the Commission is pleased to be starting down the road toward 

meeting this challenge. 

I also want to thank you for recognizing the substantial expertise 

of the Commission and its staff when it directed the Commission 

to play a consultative role in the development of the Recovery Act’s 

grant and loan programs, and while that is a large part of the discussion already this morning, many of us at the Commission believe that Congress charged us perhaps with the most important 

responsibility since implementing the 1996 Telecom Act: the development of a comprehensive national broadband plan to make sure 

that all Americans have the benefits of affordable, high-speed 

broadband. At this juncture, Acting Chairman Copps would almost 

certainly point out, and I feel compelled to do the same, that all 

means everyone, whether you are rich or poor, live in a rural or 

urban area, underserved, unserved or on tribal lands, have a disability or a small business or a senior citizen or high school grant, 

ubiquitous, affordable high-speed broadband has the power to help 

restore our economic well-being and open the doors of opportunity 

for all Americans. With broadband’s potential benefits for jobs, education, public safety, the environment, health care and so much 

more, there could not be a better time to begin developing and implementing a national broadband plan. 

The Commission is moving forward simultaneously on several 

broadband-related fronts. Pursuant to the Recovery Act, we are 

lending our expertise to our colleagues at the NTIA and RUS as 

they implement the grant and loan programs. The Commission is 

currently seeking comment on the definitions that we have been 

asked to consult on. In addition, as required by the Farm Bill of 

2008 and in coordination with the Secretary of Agriculture, Acting 

Chairman Copps will be preparing a report for Congress by May 

22nd on a rural broadband strategy. The Commission has sought 

comment on these rural broadband issues as well. We very much 

appreciate the interagency coordination and consultation that is occurring with NTIA and RUS on all of these issues. 

As we continue to refine our views, the Commission staff will be 

hearing from a broad array of stakeholders including public interests, private sector, governmental and consumer groups to ensure 

they will receive the benefit of a wide range of perspectives. The 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
39 

information the Commission gleans from these efforts will undoubtedly help inform the Commission as it develops the vital national 

broadband plan, and this gets arguably to the most important piece 

of the puzzle for us. At its next open meeting on April 8th, the 

Commission plans to kick off its efforts to develop a national 

broadband plan. The acting chairman has circulated a notice of inquiry to his colleagues that is intended to be broad in scope. This 

is of course only the beginning of the process. The Commission 

among other things plans to receive input from traditional and 

non-traditional stakeholders, complete consumer surveys and international comparisons as required by statute, and work with federal, State and local agencies in gathering the best ideas. 

By next February, the Commission will complete the tasks that 

Congress entrusted us with: to provide Congress and the American 

people with a national broadband strategy, a plan for action for 

meeting the broadband infrastructure challenge facing the Nation. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I would be happy 

to answer any questions you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Deutchman follows:] 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
40 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 48 67823A.020
41 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 49 67823A.021
42 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 50 67823A.022
43 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Deutchman. 

Ms. Chong. 

STATEMENT OF RACHELLE CHONG 

Ms. CHONG. Good morning. I would like to thank Chairman Boucher, Congressman Stearns and the members of the subcommittee 

for inviting me back to Washington, D.C. I was a former FCC commissioner in the mid-1990s and it is always a tremendous personal 

pleasure to be back to my old stomping grounds. 

California is certainly grateful for the opportunity presented 

under ARRA to continue our improvement of our broadband infrastructure in California. In California, we know that broadband is 

as important as the roads and the bridges in terms of our businesses and our people. We began with leadership from Governor 

Arnold Schwarzenegger. He established a broadband taskforce in 

2006, and the first thing we did was, we took the initiative of doing 

our broadband mapping project, and if we had not done our 

broadband mapping project, I do not think we would have spent 

our broadband money as wisely as if we had not. 

We also initiated two programs after the mapping project and 

these programs were done by my agency, the California Public Utilities Commission. The first program is a broadband infrastructure 

grant program called the California Advance Service Fund. The 

second program was the PUC’s establishment of a successful nonprofit organization which we call the California Emerging Technology Fund, CETF. CETF provides grants to community-based organizations who bridge the digital divide and we got the CETF 

seed money, $60 million, from voluntary donations from AT&T and 

Verizon related to 2005 mergers. 

Last Monday we held a workshop in San Francisco on the ARRA 

broadband provisions. We have in California a collaboration of the 

governor’s office, the California PUC, the Emerging Technology 

Fund and others to get ready to submit applications. Based on our 

meeting, it is far to say California will have a number of shovelready projects ready to submit to NTIA and RUS at the right time 

to continue the work we have done in California. 

The Recovery Act broadband programs are strikingly similar to 

what we have done in California. It begins with the funding of 

broadband maps. It is my personal view that a mapping project is 

a critical prerequisite to any broadband program in a State. Put 

very simply, a State needs to know where broadband is and where 

it ain’t before it spends its money. I speak from experience because 

quite candidly, if we had undertaken our broadband program before doing our mapping exercise, I believe we would have misspent 

some of our funds. 

I have to tell you that the mapping exercise brought some surprises to the regulators and, frankly, to the broadband providers 

themselves, and so I would urge the States who have not yet done 

a broadband mapping project to swiftly undertake one. It took us 

about 7 months. 

Recovery Act funding is also provided for two main categories of 

programs: broadband infrastructure programs and programs designed to increase computer usage and adoption. I do think it is 

wise to pursue both paths at the same time. Some States have 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
44 

done the broadband mapping and they are ready to move forward 

on some of the adoption programs. Other States probably will want 

to do their broadband mapping first and then proceed to the next 

step but you can proceed on both paths simultaneously. Now, we 

did our mapping exercise first and then we attacked adoption programs and the access problem, and on access we were trying to basically reach 1.4 million people and 2,000 little communities in 

California that had no service or very slow broadband service. 

We do have a definition to suggest to our colleagues at NTIA and 

RUS and the FCC. We defined ‘‘unserved’’ as any area that isn’t 

served by any form of facilities-based broadband or where Internet 

connectivity is available only through dial-up or satellite service. 

The California PUC further defined ‘‘underserved’’ as an area 

where broadband is available but no facilities-based provider offers 

service at speeds of at least 3 megabits per second down and 1 

megabit per second up. I will talk about speed in a minute. 

We established a 2-year-long .25 surcharge on our intrastate telephone revenues—it comes out to about a nickel a month—to create 

a $100 broadband infrastructure fund at the PUC. The PUC then 

told our broadband providers it would pay 40 percent of the cost 

of a project but we did require the applicant to match it with 60 

percent. We wanted them to have skin the game. I commend your 

work on ARRA because you decided to give federal funds of 80 percent and suggesting a 20 percent match. Now, we have a 40 percent match level and we have seen about 50 applications at the 

PUC requesting about $35 million covering about 160,000 households. We have actually decided on applications that commit $9.15 

million so far and we are covering about 8,800 households that 

have benefited. So the PUC has left a lot of money that we could 

use to match ARRA funds to continue our broadband work. 

I asked my staff on average, how much did it cost to get to the 

unserved households. I thought that might be of interest to you. 

And as of the applications we have granted so far, and we are not 

done yet, it costs about on average $2,800 to reach an unserved 

household in California. Our program is only available to any company that holds a certificate of public convenience and necessary as 

a phone provider or is a registered wireless carrier. We are now 

looking at rules to extend our program to wireless Internet service 

providers, for example. 

Speeds, just a quick moment. We wanted to tell you that we had 

used a current-generation broadband speed of about 3 megabits per 

second down and 1 megabit per second up. We did not make it a 

minimum, though, because we felt if there was an applicant who 

is the only applicant willing to serve an unserved area, any 

broadband speed was better than no broadband speed. However, 

we did look at speeds in terms of how we rank the applications. We 

did award more points for faster speeds but we did it at a diminishing level in order to favor applications that would provide current-generation speeds, 3 megabits down, 1 megabit up, over those 

that sought next-generation speeds but you can change the formula 

to have faster speeds as you go on. I have listed in my testimony 

the criteria that we used in our infrastructure grant program hoping that might be helpful to the federal agencies, and we did allow 

some transport or middle mile costs to be covered. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
45 

I also wanted to highlight the work of CETF, who is our nonprofit organization, and they are focusing on the affordability and 

adoption issues, which are just as important—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Ms. Chong, if you could wrap up, that would be 

helpful. 

Ms. CHONG. Yes. Thank you. All I wanted to say about CETF is 

that they have very successfully used community-based organizations with already successful programs to bring it to the next step 

and we hope that the criteria that they use might be useful to our 

colleagues. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Chong follows:] 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
46 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 54 67823A.023
47 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 55 67823A.024
48 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 56 67823A.025
49 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 57 67823A.026
50 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 58 67823A.027
51 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 59 67823A.028
52 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 60 67823A.029
53 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 61 67823A.030
54 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Chong. 

Ms. Turner-Lee. 

STATEMENT OF NICOL TURNER-LEE 

Ms. TURNER-LEE. Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member Stearns 

and esteemed committee members, I thank you for the opportunity 

to address you today. 

One Economy is a global nonprofit that leverages the power of 

technology and information to connect low-income people to the 

economic mainstream, and we bring broadband into the homes of 

low-income people. So much of what I am going to talk about today 

in my summary statement is around the home. We also produce 

public purpose media and we engage young people in serving as 

technology ambassadors to move this movement forward. 

Today as we examine issues related to the ARRA, I want to 

share a framework for success. As the witnesses here alongside of 

me talking about mapping it and building it, we also have to think 

about using it and the relevance behind the use, particularly for 

low-income people. Many examples of our work are provided in our 

written testimony but I do want to highlight the chair’s commitment to a national policy, which I think is the whole of all the 

parts. 

When we look at data on broadband, we see both good and bad 

news, which reflects the incongruencies that we today in society 

around broadband access. Most Americans by far have access but 

a recent report released by Pew suggests that they don’t understand the relevancy or the usefulness of the broadband. So again, 

we can build it, but does that mean people will come? 

When we look at the affordability of broadband access, we have 

got to see that as a significant inequality that exists as a barrier 

to adoption. How can people afford broadband if there are other 

things that they are working on or trying to survive with that get 

in the way of looking at the value proposition behind having 

broadband access? We would like for us to consider as we go forth 

that a goal of the broadband opportunities program, for example, 

should be to create a digital ecosystem comprised of the home, the 

school, community centers, libraries, workforce development centers and even mobile devices that support what we call a culture 

of use, and the home should be the core of that digital ecosystem. 

A second goal should be focused on promoting broadband with a 

purpose that educates, motivates and empowers people to take control of their lives. In our work at One Economy, we have seen the 

power of broadband give low-income people tools for improving education, their health and their economic lives. When it is all said 

and done, the priority of what we have right now with the 

broadband stimulus program should be to put low-income people 

first in line, whether they are unserved or in underserved neighborhoods. Being first in line is critical to this first tranche of serving a pilot to show how effective we can be in this area. What better way, and I want to echo the home, to improve the quality of 

lives, through the provision of broadband into the home which will 

broaden the aspiration of people who are currently sitting back 

right now not participating in this economy. That action alone can 

take us on a chart towards leveling the playing field. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
55 

In our work a few years ago, we actually went to housing finance 

agencies and looked at the low-income tax credit, for example, to 

provide broadband access into affordable housing. As a result of 

that work, one in 300,000 units of housing now have broadband access from New York to Chicago to San Francisco. So I want to put 

that out there as one of the drivers. 

Affordable, availability and usefulness are critical to this program and I would like to just leave us with six key drivers that 

we have learned from our work that should be included in the 

framing of how this money is allocated. They should include adoption, public-private partnerships, intentionality, affordability, sustainability and innovation. Adoption can be promoted in a variety 

of ways in local communities. Public awareness about the benefits 

of digital access, online public purpose media that puts vital information directly into the hands of citizens, digital literacy that creates or enhances aptitude are all valuable in adoption. For low-income people who are often caught in the web of government programs and services, simple and direct online access to programs 

can mean the difference between missing a day of work or standing 

in line at a municipal building. 

Second, stimulus investments can be multiplied through publicprivate partnerships. Partnerships that create synergy between 

government programs and private sector interests help expand access for the public good. The example that I shared about the 

repurposing of the housing tax credit is one way to look at that 

synergy that could exist. 

Third, the need to be intentional about how broadband stimulus 

funds are used to serve low-income or disenfranchised groups is 

crucial to the deployment of services and expansion of use. Stimulus funding can be used to move the meter, move the meter and 

support aging in place programs, educational programs, health care 

and workforce development programs and support the emerging 

needs of vulnerable populations whether unserved or underserved 

in location, and the allocation of stimulus funding, if we don’t do 

this right, we are going to fail, at least this first time around. 

And affordability of course is the fourth driver. When we look at 

the free or low-cost provisioning of services in communities that 

need it most, we should not reduce the quality of content or speed 

available to those communities and we should consider innovative 

pricing models that help people maintain use and not just become 

sporadic or one-time users of the Internet. 

Sustaining engagement is equally important and I think under 

the current Administration coupling this with service may also be 

a critical aspect. We have a program that engages young people 

who I think by many of us in this room are far more active around 

technology where service becomes critical to their use in sustaining 

engagement. 

And finally, innovation, and my final point. Unproven experiments should not be our goal here and technology bias should not 

hinder solutions. Innovative programs that are scalable, replicable 

and outcome-driven should be supported, especially when they leverage private and public partnerships. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Turner-Lee follows:] 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
56 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 65 67823A.031
57 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 66 67823A.032
58 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 67 67823A.033
59 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 68 67823A.034
60 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 69 67823A.035
61 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 70 67823A.036
62 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Ms. Turner-Lee. 

We now have a series of five recorded votes pending on the Floor 

of the House of Representatives, and it will probably take somewhere on the order of 45 minutes for that to be completed, so we 

are going to recess now and when we return we will hear from Mr. 

Mefford and Mr. Large and then have an opportunity to question 

all the witnesses. The subcommittee stands in recess until the conclusion of the final recorded vote. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. WEINER. [Presiding] The subcommittee will come to order. 

Mr. Mefford, you are recognized for 5 minutes to make an opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF BRIAN R. MEFFORD 

Mr. MEFFORD. Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Stearns, 

members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be 

with you today and to discuss these important elements of the 

broadband stimulus. 

When I had the honor of testifying before this subcommittee 

nearly 2 years ago, our country’s broadband policy was in a very 

different place. Today, thanks in large part to the hard work of this 

committee, Congress has enacted the Broadband Data Improvement Act of 2008 with unanimous bipartisan support. Through this 

Act, Congress established a clear path for broadband expansion 

through State-based public-private partnerships and now through 

the broadband stimulus Congress and the Obama Administration 

have provided funding for implementing the Broadband Act, setting the course to realize the numerous promises of broadband 

technology for all Americans. 

For the last 5 years, Connected Nation has worked directly with 

States, local leaders and consumers and broadband providers to 

build partnerships that accelerate broadband availability and use. 

We work on behalf of American consumers and businesses and we 

continue to find that those previously underserved or overlooked 

people can and will overcome broadband challenges when the public and private sectors are working together for meaningful change. 

Mr. Chairman, while there are many promising components of 

the broadband stimulus that I could address in remarks, those 

things that will be carried out by the RUS, the NTIA and the FCC, 

my remarks today will focus on the elements associated with the 

Broadband Data Improvement Act with an emphasis on ensuring 

that these important elements are not lost in the pursuit to rapidly 

address the—— 

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Mefford, can I interrupt you for a moment? I 

understand your microphone is not on and we are not picking it up. 

Is it on there? 

Mr. MEFFORD. So again, Mr. Chairman, my emphasis in my remarks today will focus specifically on the elements—not working? 

Mr. WEINER. Try it again. I have been the chairman for 15 seconds and already I have broken something. Ms. Chong, try yours. 

Is yours working there? 

Ms. CHONG. Testing one, two, three. It sounds like they are all 

muted up here for some reason. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
63 

Mr. WEINER. That is the most important thing that we have your 

comments on the record and apparently we do, so Mr. Mefford, why 

don’t you continue and we will reset some time on your clock there. 

Mr. MEFFORD. So again, just to emphasize my emphasis for the 

committee, I will focus my remarks on the elements associated 

with the Broadband Data Improvement Act so that we can talk 

about ensuring that these important elements are not lost in the 

pursuit to rapidly address the supply side elements of the stimulus. 

Specifically, we would like to offer two suggestions that would 

help ensure that all broadband stimulus funding is invested in a 

manner that is effective, accountable and achieves the ultimate 

goal of sustainable broadband access and adoption. On the point of 

broadband mapping, I want to offer our view that effective mapping must take place as Congress determined through a collaborative public-private partnership approach. The Broadband Act 

clearly establishes—— 

Mr. WEINER. The mic is on now. 

Mr. MEFFORD. On the first point of broadband mapping, I want 

to offer our view, Connected Nation’s view, that effective mapping 

must take place as Congress determined through a collaborative 

public-private partnership approach. The Broadband Act clearly established a straightforward policy for broadband mapping. The law 

calls for mapping at a household and business level and it clearly 

states that the public and private sectors should work together to 

achieve all components of the program. Today, at least 9 States are 

already using this collaborative approach for household-level 

broadband mapping and these States have achieved or will soon 

achieve a broadband map that identifies areas unserved and underserved down to the street and individual household. Those States 

now have an effective tool for targeting projects through the stimulus, and additionally, once those projects are funded and deployed, 

the broadband maps which are updated continuously will show exactly where and how broadband stimulus grants are being used to 

fill the broadband gaps. This household-level mapping of provider 

service availability data is the only way to truly understand where 

the broadband gaps exist, particularly in rural areas. If broadband 

mapping is done at any higher level using any other source of data, 

the result will be a severe overestimation of broadband deployment 

across the United States, creating, Mr. Chairman, an impractical 

way to effectively track and measure the effectiveness of those investments. It is imperative, and we would encourage the NTIA to 

implement broadband mapping in the manner that Congress has 

set forth through the Broadband Act of 2008. It is this local on-theground approach that produces maps of broadband availability and 

speeds which are accurate, detailed, publicly accessible and 

verifiable, continuously updated and most importantly, they are 

useful for filling the broadband gaps. 

The second point I would like to make today after spending the 

first half of my time establishing the importance of broadband 

mapping, I want to remind us all that the $350 million that is provided in the broadband stimulus act for implementing the 

Broadband Data Improvement Act is not just about mapping. Indeed, mapping is just one piece of the larger grant program within 

the Broadband Act. The bulk of that grant program enables grassVerDate Mar 15 2010 04:19 Apr 13, 2012 Jkt 067823 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A823.XXX A823

jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
64 

roots awareness and adoption programs, programs that will ensure 

that once the infrastructure funding is invested, Americans in most 

need of broadband will directly benefit from it. What we know is 

that broadband is available to roughly 90 percent of Americans yet 

only about 57 percent of Americans subscribe to broadband. In 

areas where the recession has hit the hardest, broadband adoption 

is much lower, and even in areas where broadband is already universally available. This doesn’t diminish the need for deploying 

broadband to areas that remain unserved or underserved. 

Broadband deployment in those areas is a critical piece of the 

broadband stimulus. However, the ultimate measure of success and 

accountability for the $7.2 billion of funding in the broadband stimulus will come down to whether or not people use broadband once 

it is made available. 

Connected Nation’s work in more than 400 communities as well 

as a vast body of research reinforces the need for broadband infrastructure funding and further reinforces the need for affordable 

broadband offerings. However, this experience and research indicate that the top barrier to broadband adoption is not price or 

availability but rather a lack of demand for broadband services. In 

fact, Mr. Chairman, more than half of those who have not adopted 

broadband say that is it not relevant to them. They are not interested or they simply don’t see the point of having a broadband-connected computer at home. The results are similar in both urban 

and rural areas. Basically there is a dire need for broadband 

awareness, education and training, and it is only when people actually use broadband that we start to see the real long-term economic 

benefits. 

The State grant program in the Broadband Act of 2008 includes 

a series of requirements for State-based expansion programs that 

address all these demand-side challenges, and these five elements 

of the Broadband Act have provided the thrust of Connected Nation’s State-based programs in places like Kentucky, Tennessee and 

Ohio, and the results from these three States, these States and others, continue to demonstrate that all five of those Broadband Act 

elements are critical for success in accelerating broadband. 

In conclusion, it is clear that it has been demonstrated that public-private partnerships have proven to be the most effective vehicle 

for accelerating broadband availability and use. There will be 

voices that choose to ignore the path that Congress has laid out. 

However, when we look past the self-interested positioning in order 

to objectively assess what really works to map broadband availability, to fill the broadband gaps and to bridge the digital divide 

for all Americans from Main Street to Butcher Hollow, it is clear 

that a successful approach is a collaborative model where the public and private sectors work together to bring broadband to all 

Americans. Congress has charted that course and we are confident 

that the executive branch will steer the ship with the same spirit 

of collaboration. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mefford follows:] 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
65 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 75 67823A.037
66 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 76 67823A.038
67 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 77 67823A.039
68 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 78 67823A.040
69 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 79 67823A.041
70 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 80 67823A.042
71 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 81 67823A.043
72 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 82 67823A.044
73 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 83 67823A.045
74 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 84 67823A.046
75 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 85 67823A.047
76 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 86 67823A.048
77 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 87 67823A.049
78 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 88 67823A.050
79 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 89 67823A.051
80 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 90 67823A.052
81 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 91 67823A.053
82 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 92 67823A.054
83 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 93 67823A.055
84 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 94 67823A.056
85 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 95 67823A.057
86 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 96 67823A.058
87 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 97 67823A.059
88 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 98 67823A.060
89 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 99 67823A.061
90 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 100 67823A.062
91 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 101 67823A.063
92 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 102 67823A.064
93 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 103 67823A.065
94 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you, Mr. Mefford. 

Mr. Large, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF JONATHAN LARGE 

Mr. LARGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Stearns. I appreciate the opportunity today to share our story with 

you. 

Patrick County was formed in 1791 and is currently home to 

19,517 citizens. Patrick County is composed of 483 miles. The land 

is generally characterized as gently rolling terrain and the Blue 

Ridge Mountains and on the south side of the North Carolina border. The topographical changes cause distinct seasonal and temperature differences within the county. It is also the reason for Patrick County’s beautiful scenery and varied outdoor recreation opportunities and some of its most renowned tourist attractions. 

However, it also creates a problem for Internet connection and cell 

phone reception. Patrick County has long depended on the textile 

and lumber business to provide the county’s residents with job opportunities and employment benefits and a sense of satisfaction for 

a job well done. Our textile and tobacco industry has been devastated by a loss of jobs to foreign counties like many other communities in Southside Virginia and Piedmont North Carolina. 

There are empty factories which provided citizens with jobs for decades. Those plants now sit empty with little or no hope of any other 

such industry coming into the county to fill those buildings and 

offer employment to those who need work. Our residents have to 

leave the county and State in some instances to find employment 

where their skills can be utilized or the jobs they take require very 

little skills or training. This normally leads to lower wages to replace the earnings around which they build their household budget. 

Our lumber industry has fed the housing market and other lumber industries such as furniture also. Since the housing market has 

drastically dropped, the demand for lumber is limited. Again, those 

who were lucky enough to find employment somewhere else normally had to take a reduction in take-home pay and thus the 

standard of living. The county is working hard to try to provide 

jobs for the residents that live there and also the remaining businesses. Our education foundation under the leadership of former 

Governor Gerald Baliles, a Patrick County native, has worked hard 

to bring us up in ranking from number 43 to 2nd among 45 Virginia rural counties based on population per 1,000. Eighty-five percent of our students that graduated high school last year went on 

to higher education as a result also yet one-third of our students 

have high-speed Internet access. The students need the capability 

to connect via high-speed Internet to do research or complete 

course assignments from their home. The schools simply cannot 

provide enough computers simultaneously for all students who 

want to use them. 

We believe Patrick County must provide the infrastructure to 

build a network which will provide the broadband connections at 

affordable prices. Due to Patrick County’s rural and mountainous 

nature, the Extension of Last Mile Telecommunications Initiative 

was enacted in 2000. The project, funded through grants from the 

Tobacco Commission, provided construction of the Mid-Atlantic 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
95 

Broadband Project. Along with local providers, Patrick County completed an advanced fiber backbone along the main road arteries in 

the populated regions of the county. Although this improved backbone for high-speed Internet capability assisted local demand, as 

mentioned previously, with the mountainous terrains, peaks and 

valleys, it still resulted in large gaps throughout the county of 

unserved populations. It is important to have both wired and wireless broadband capability to fully serve the remote regions of the 

county. A recently completed broadband study confirmed that there 

is a significant unserved population for high-speed Internet. Based 

on the study, high-speed Internet itself will create a new business, 

employment and education advancement for our county. We have 

waited and fallen behind communities that have many choices for 

high-speed connectivity which will keep and bring new jobs to their 

people. We can wait no longer. 

Changing economies in the industry have resulted in closing of 

textile and furniture factories within a 50-mile radius so jobs are 

unavailable to fill the void. We now have been forced to diversify. 

Some farms have converted to alternative farming such as cattle, 

small grain, and produce. However, these will never bring the revenue provided by manufacturing and tobacco production. Others 

that have lost jobs are finding ways to earn money by starting online Internet businesses. 

We have high-speed Internet service to all our public schools in 

Patrick County but our students cannot take advantage of the system’s full potential without high-speed Internet in their homes. 

In January of 2007, our chairman of our broadband taskforce, 

Roger Hayden, worked with Representative Boucher to develop a 

plan for a USDA Rural Connectivity Grant, partnering with 

Embarq to supply high-speed Internet connectivity to the 

Claudville community. This also included updating our community 

building by building a 10-computer learning center and funded and 

operated for 2 years. Everyone in the community was very happy. 

We also worked with Embarq representative Rick Schollman. Everyone was upbeat about the progress. We had the survey reports 

ready for March 2008 broadband meeting. After all the groundwork 

had been done, another Internet provider in the area came forward 

to the meeting and said that they had established a presence in 

this area and were supplying high-speed Internet service to the 

Claudville area. Therefore, the community was ineligible for a 

grant because the program rules stipulate that there could be no 

high-speed service in the area. There was disappointment after all 

the preparation. Our hopes of receiving a grant were thwarted. We 

read the RUS requirements regarding existing service and confirmed that high-speed Internet service to one household was 

enough to make the entire Claudville community ineligible for the 

grant. This was some time back now, and the company has still not 

served any households other than the one. 

The Claudville experience is an example of the importance of 

having a reasonable definition of ‘‘unserved’’ and ‘‘underserved.’’ In 

this case, the definition of ‘‘unserved’’ used by RUS could be construed as overly restrictive because if just one or two households 

in a community have access to broadband, RUS considers the community served and it is not eligible for—— 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
96 

Mr. WEINER. You can start to wrap up, Mr. Large. 

Mr. LARGE. Okay. And is ineligible for grant programs. Communities should not be disqualified from receiving stimulus support on 

the handful of homes in an otherwise unserved community to have 

access to broadband. 

Thank you again. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Large follows:] 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
97 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 107 67823A.066
98 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 108 67823A.067
99 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 109 67823A.068
100 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 110 67823A.069
101 

Mr. WEINER. I thank all the witnesses. I yield myself 5 minutes. 

There is no doubt that the gray areas in Mr. Space’s chart and 

the unserved areas that we obviously need to address those. It 

seems to me you are going to have some tough questions about the 

notion of underserved. Is it the intention to allow communities that 

might have Wi-Fi already experiment with WiMAX, experiment, 

college campuses, for example, experiment with some of the next 

generation of technology. I know, Commissioner Chong, you said 

there is a basis against that use in California, to first try to serve 

those that are underserved. But Mr. Seifert, is it your sense—I 

know that the regulations haven’t been written but that is going 

to be an opportunity for us to experiment with perhaps the next 

generation of Wi-Fi as well? 

Mr. SEIFERT. Well, Congress has been very clear. In fact, in the 

committee report for this section of the Recovery Act, they said 

that it was the—both the House and the Senate said that they believed next generation would reach more people at greater speeds. 

Again, as you noted, we haven’t made any determinations. We are 

waiting to hear from the public. I can tell you that we have heard 

a range of opinions about that including the one that you have expressed that if we are going to build, we should use next generation, if we are going to invest money in the future, and as I said 

in my statement, we are talking about proof of concept. Folks are 

looking to invest in scalable or things that can continue to develop, 

not dead-end technologies but technologies that can continue to expand and bring greater—— 

Mr. WEINER. But WiMAX is not a brand-new thing. I mean, 

there are other nations that have higher, fatter pipes than we do 

so it is not like it is completely unheard of. So if someone presents—again, this is all subject to rules that haven’t been made 

yet. But if someone presented to you the notion, you know, we 

want to make this corner of Tucson, Arizona, a test, although we 

have Wi-Fi, we are not like Mr. Large’s community, that we have 

Wi-Fi that is accessible but this college campus, for example, comes 

and says we want to be a laboratory to see just how, what kind of 

businesses would pop up if we really had expanded access. Again, 

without prejudging what the regulations would say, there is nothing in the Act that prevents this money from being used for that 

purpose? 

Mr. SEIFERT. No. My recollection would be that there is nothing 

in the Act that would prevent that. There are things in the Act 

that would say is this sustainable, is this a working business 

model, those sorts of things which we would use to test all applications and so I think you are correct that there is nothing that 

would prevent that sort of application pending whatever rules we 

put in place about how those applications are going to be received. 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you. 

Mr. Stearns, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Commissioner Chong, you had indicated in your opening statement how critical the step is for mapping, and if States start today 

with broadband mapping, can the applicants still meet the deadlines set forth in the Act? 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
102 

Ms. CHONG. Oh, I think so. Just to give you an idea, it took us 

about 7 months total. Three to 4 months was convincing the carriers to voluntarily give us the data, and they did that once we 

agreed to have an independent third party take the data, aggregate 

it and then give it to the government agencies to protect confidential data. In terms of mapping, it went very quickly. We had streetaddress-level mapping so it is very granular, more so than what is 

being required at the FCC today, and it took us about 3 to 4 

months to map the entire State, and we are a big State, and we 

used mapping personnel who was at a State health agency. He was 

the only guy we had, and he was doing it literally nights and weekends and it took 3 to 4 months. So if he had been working full time 

on it, we probably could have gotten it done a lot faster. 

Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Mefford, how long do you think it will take? 

I mean, she did California, but do you know how many States have 

already been mapped? 

Mr. MEFFORD. There have been roughly 10 States that have—— 

Mr. STEARNS. So out of 50, there is 10 that have. Can we do it 

in less than 6 months here? 

Mr. MEFFORD. We actually can. I mean, if the Nation—well, 6 to 

9 months is a reasonable time frame to have the entire country 

mapped down to the household level. 

Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter 

into the record a paper by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association which notes that 9 to 10 million American 

households are unserved by broadband, and that is, that are in 

areas that lack physical infrastructure for broadband. 

Mr. WEINER. Without objection. 

Mr. STEARNS. NCTA recommends that the Act funds be 

prioritized to serve these unserved areas rather than the 90 percent of the country that has broadband availability. Let us start 

with you, Commissioner Chong. What do you think about that? 

Ms. CHONG. Well, I think the Act clearly says we have to do 

both. I did in my State put a priority on unserved first, so we 

opened a filing window only for unserved first. Then secondly we 

opened a filing window for underserved. 

Mr. STEARNS. You heard Mr. Mefford mention that there is lack 

of interest. I mean, 90 percent available, 60 percent. What were 

your figures? Ninety percent available and 60 percent? 

Mr. MEFFORD. Roughly 57 percent, according to Pew data. 

Mr. STEARNS. That are actually—— 

Mr. MEFFORD. That are actually subscribing to it, yes, sir. 

Mr. STEARNS. So you would have a large percentage that just 

really—it is available but they are not interested in having it, 

right? So how do you deal with that? 

Ms. CHONG. Well, we have been dealing with that, and the way 

we have attacked it is, we have opened community technology centers in some of the underserved or disadvantaged communities. We 

also have programs teaching seniors how to use a computer and access e-mail. We have been refurbishing computers through programs, taking donated computers from businesses, refurbishing 

and then getting them out for about $100, $200 into low-income 

communities. So these types of demand-side stimulation have been 

working in California and we submitted some statistics to you from 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
103 

our Emerging Technology Fund to show that in really just a year 

and a half, they have reached out and touched thousands and thousands of Californians’ lives so it is doable. 

Mr. STEARNS. Okay. Mr. Seifert, what do you think of Mr. 

Mefford’s and Commissioner Chong’s idea that we can do it in less 

than 6 months, the mapping of all the 40 States? 

Mr. SEIFERT. Again, and I don’t—we are in the middle of receiving all these comments and I hope, I believe California has filed or 

is filing it and I am hoping that the other folks are filing. We are 

looking at these issues very closely. We know that—— 

Mr. STEARNS. Just offhand, would you say you can do it? 

Mr. SEIFERT. I don’t know because I haven’t seen and reviewed 

the whole record but I know that the stimulus act says that our 

primary job is to—— 

Mr. STEARNS. Commissioner Chong, you admitted it took you 2 

or 3 months once you got going to map it, right? 

Ms. CHONG. Yes. 

Mr. STEARNS. Okay, so if you got 40 States to do and Seifert has 

to do this, I don’t know how he could possibly get it done by the 

30th of September. 

Ms. CHONG. Well, the first thing is, you need to have clear standards about what the mapping is going to cover and that needs to 

happen first. 

Mr. STEARNS. Do you have those in place? 

Mr. SEIFERT. That is part of the rulemaking is, what level of 

granularity, what things should we look at. We have 11 maps right 

now of different States but it is a map of apples, oranges, pears because people have done things differently, so for a national 

broadband map, you would need something that uses all the same 

data points in order to get a real picture so you would know when 

you are looking at Kentucky versus Ohio versus Indiana that you 

are comparing apples to apples to apples. 

Mr. STEARNS. I note that the NTIA has considered sustainability 

to be a critical part of consideration of grant proposals, and that 

is good. What evidence will NTIA look at to determine whether a 

project will not require additional taxpayer money once the Act 

funds have been spent, and will you commit to require all projects 

to be sustainable to be eligible for funding so you are not coming 

back, you know, like the DTV, keep coming back for more money? 

Mr. SEIFERT. The Act says look at sustainability, look at viability, and we intend to fully implement the Act as Congress drafted 

it or has enacted it, and sustainable is important because these are 

supposed to be test bed proof of concept for down the road, and if 

you have a project that can’t live on its own after the 2 years, that 

may not really teach us all the lessons we need to know in order 

for future investments to take place so it is a very serious consideration. We are receiving comment from across the board about how 

to test that, how to demonstrate the projects are workable and 

workable. 

Mr. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you, Mr. Stearns. 

Ms. Christensen, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to 

all of the panelists. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
104 

Mr. Seifert, among the recommendations from MMTC, which I 

am sure would be seconded by the Alliance for Digital Equality, is 

that minority-serving institutions should not be expected to meet 

a 20 percent match in the BTOP, and there is precedent set in at 

least one other section of the ARRA. Do you see any barriers to 

waiving this match in this or any other special circumstances? 

Mr. SEIFERT. The statute clearly contemplates waiver where parties demonstrate financial need, and I take your point very seriously. We had this discussion at one of our field hearings where 

tribal interests were represented and the issue came up and it was 

a matter of great debate amongst the tribes themselves about 

whether if you did not require the match, wouldn’t that shorten the 

amount of dollars you could get out, it might shorten the number 

of tribes you could reach, or if you did require the match, that 

would allow you to stretch dollars further. So that is kind of the 

range of debate we are seeing about this, and then other folks have 

said what about if I give you staff, does that staff account for, and 

so we are looking at those issues and trying to make sure that we 

figure out the best way to make the most of—out of these dollars 

and to get this—to stretch these dollars as far as we possibly can. 

Ms. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you. And again to Mr. Seifert and Mr. 

Villano as well, Representative Rush mentioned his amendment 

that says consider whether an applicant is a small, disadvantaged 

business under the Small Business Act section 8A. Civil rights 

groups suggest a point system where you would give extra points 

to a disadvantaged business applicant or subcontractor. Is that possible? Is that something you would support? I noted in some meetings that we had with the agencies overseeing TARP and TALF 

that even though some of them had some outreach to disadvantaged business, they really didn’t have any way to monitor it or to 

make sure it happened. So is a point system possible and are you 

able—do you have goals set and a way to reach those folks? 

Mr. SEIFERT. A point system is certainly possible. So that is part 

of the selection criteria or the evaluation of prioritizing and so we 

are definitely looking at that. We have received comment on that. 

We had a number of members from the MMTC group on our panels 

to talk about those very issues. One thing I am excited about is 

really, we have a subdivision of my agency, the Minority Business 

Development Agency, that we are working with very closely that 

has some great staff. That is in Commerce. And then within my 

agency, we have the Minority Telecom Development Program. So 

I have gone to them already and asked them to develop a program 

to make sure that we have outreach, that when folks who are doing 

these projects are either looking for contractors that they have the 

ability to marry up those interests with these people who want to 

provide this. So it is our intent to make sure that there is a wideopen door for folks to walk through and participate in this program. 

Ms. CHRISTENSEN. And are you the same? 

Mr. VILLANO. Definitely the same. We are looking at all those options also. 

Ms. CHRISTENSEN. Ms. Turner-Lee and Mr. Mefford, I had the 

same question about growing demand. Everybody talked about the 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
105 

need to grow demand and I wonder if you had anything to add to 

what Commissioner Chong spoke to. 

Mr. MEFFORD. Yes, ma’am. Thank you for the question. I will reference how important it is to carry out these activities at the very 

local level and so part of what we do is build community technology 

leadership teams. We call them e-community leadership teams and 

they bring together a cross-segment of the local community and so 

you have local elected officials and folks representing the health 

care sector and education and agriculture and on down the line, 

tourism, et cetera, and they own their local plan for how they are 

going to use the broadband once it becomes available and so as we 

work to help school districts figure out how they could improve 

their product and their educational system with broadband, that 

then sparks a community-wide interest in people owning computers 

to be able to take advantage of that while the local school district 

is investing. Specifically from Tennessee, I want to note that our 

program there after 18 months of that kind of activity, home 

broadband adoption has increased by 26 percent compared to 15 

percent growth nationally, and underserved populations have seen 

actually the largest increases in adoption in computer ownership, 

particularly among the demographics where we sort of micro-targeted so we have had—— 

Ms. CHRISTENSEN. Right. My time is running out. Thank you for 

your answer. I would like to let Ms. Turner-Lee get a few seconds 

in. 

Ms. TURNER-LEE. To echo Mr. Mefford’s comments on growing 

demand, I mean what we do in our work daily is to figure out how 

to deal with that side of the equation, and I think we can again 

build it but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the value proposition is there for potential consumers. I would like to just suggest 

as we look at programs to fund that we think in scale. Many things 

that we do from the stuff that we are doing in housing to ensure 

that where people live that there is a connection that is tied to 

their ability to get resources from government services, from educational outlets where people also—where you can engage young 

people. Young people serve as a catalyst in many neighborhoods. 

Our digital connector program, which has reached almost 3,000 

youth to date, those kids have provided 56,000 hours of community 

service teaching their neighbors about technology. Applications— 

we have not talked yet about the application side of broadband. 

Once the broadband is available, what will people do on it. We 

have been very successful at creating what we call public purpose 

media applications, much like public broadcasting, to digitize that 

space and ensure that people get the resources that they need. So 

I would just encourage us to think bigger in terms of institutionalizing any efforts that we do on the adoption side. 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you. 

Ms. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WEINER. Ms. Matsui, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. MATSUI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to get back to the issue of broadband mapping, which I 

believe is really very important as this process moves forward, and 

obviously Ms. Chong was talking about California, which I am very 

proud to be from, and it is one of the few States that have a 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
106 

broadband mapping system in place to determine which areas are 

in need of expanded broadband service. Now, that being said, you 

told us, Ms. Chong, how long it took you to put it together. How 

much did it cost the State of California to do this? 

Ms. CHONG. We paid the outside contractor $360,000 to collect 

the data from the broadband providers and aggregate it, and then 

we had a State employee, who was a GIS mapping expert, spend 

time actually creating the maps, both regionally and on a State 

level, and his time we believe was worth about $71,000. So I think 

it puts the cost of the map for all of California, which is a big 

State, a little over $400,000. 

Ms. MATSUI. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. Mefford, how much money are you recommending NTIA to 

give to each State for their mapping? 

Mr. MEFFORD. We haven’t yet made that recommendation but it 

is a great question, and I think the California example is a good 

model. We would expect a similar cost per State, and so it is a good 

question, particularly because there is a lot of feeling and discussion around that $350 million being just for mapping but in fact 

a very small fraction of that $350 million will pay to create a national map. 

Ms. MATSUI. So you haven’t yet determined how you will divide 

up the funding for this and it is not determined on the size of the 

State exactly then? Because California is a big State. 

Mr. MEFFORD. It is. I mean, the cost for a State map is going to 

depend on State size, it is going to depend on population, it is going 

to depend on the number of broadband service providers who are 

there, but really $10 million roughly to start a first phase, a baseline map, that is a reasonable kind of figure to have in mind. 

Ms. MATSUI. Okay. Commissioner Chong, California is considering using its own broadband grant fund. It is a 20 percent for entities within the State. What is California’s process for identifying 

potential matching grant recipients for the broadband program? 

Ms. CHONG. We go out and we beat the bushes to tell everybody 

we have got a program. That is the first thing, a lot of outreach. 

And then secondly, we have set criteria of what they need to do to 

apply, which I put in my testimony. You know, we look at a lot of 

things. One of the most important things we look at is how many 

people they are going to cover, the area they are going to cover, 

how much cost that is per household, and we also look at their 

speeds because speed does matter, and then finally we look at their 

pricing. We have a little extra goody point for them if they will 

commit to a price for at least a year and we also give them another 

goody point if they will give a special price to low-income persons 

in that area, and then we basically just crunch the numbers and 

decide what to approve. 

Ms. MATSUI. Okay. Thank you. I want to go on to, let us say we 

are successful, I think about 96 percent of California residents have 

access to broadband, but let us talk about adoption because you 

could have it there but if it is not adopted, it is no good either, and 

in most cases adoption rates are associated with income as seen in 

the 2007 data from the Public Policy Institute in California, that 

only 51 percent of Californians earning under $40,000 a year subscribe to either dial-up or broadband at home but over 95 percent 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
107 

of those earning over $80,000 or more subscribe to either one of 

these services. 

I have a question for Mr. Seifert. Considering that a large part 

of the funding of the broadband initiative will be targeted to rural 

areas, how will the grant programs address urban areas? 

Mr. SEIFERT. I first want to make sure that folks understand 

that we are trying to work together to make sure that the rural 

program and NTIA’s program work together and it is one of those 

fundamental things that broadband pipes don’t really understand 

borders, and that folks are trying to connect rural areas to urban 

areas. So the demand side is very important but I think we have 

to make sure that we don’t forget that there are urban areas that 

are also underserved, or if they have been functionally redlined, 

you could say they probably are unserved. If a person in an inner 

city can’t afford the price of broadband, that person is not served 

with broadband. So those are things we are looking at. We are 

seeking comment and we have heard lots of comment in our panels. 

Ms. MATSUI. So you will—income will be considered as far as the 

definition of underserved then? 

Mr. SEIFERT. We are certainly being encouraged to do that. I 

can’t tell you that we have decided one way or the other but that 

is certainly part of the public commentary. 

Ms. MATSUI. Okay. Thank you very much. 

Mr. WEINER. The gentleman from Illinois, you are recognized for 

5 minutes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry I am late. I have 

Thomas Denenberg, who is a student in my district, and it is interesting that his father is a captain in the fire department in one of 

my communities so he asked me what my role was in that sector, 

and as a lot of people know on this committee, you know, I deal 

with the 911 caucus and this kind of segues into this, and this is 

serendipity. I didn’t plan this. But it works out well because Mr. 

Seifert, talk to me about the PSAP issue and the deployment. And 

then I would like to know from Mr. Villano, the debate, is this 

NTIA money or RUS money? 

Mr. SEIFERT. Certainly. I will do mine and then pass it to Dave. 

We had the western regional coordinator for NINA on a panel. She 

spoke about the need to make sure that when we put big 

broadband pipes in, that public safety had access to that. You know 

that is the next generation of PSAP is that if I am on my BlackBerry and I want to send something in, right now if you are not 

next-generation coordinated for your PSAP, you can’t get that information in. Folks—deaf students at Gallaudet who use BlackBerries 

can’t call that in, they can’t call into the 911 thing until we get the 

PSAPs upgraded so that is a very important part of what Congress 

has told us we need to do, is to make sure we are looking at how 

to track public safety including the PSAPs into those issues. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. So both would be involved. Which pot of money? 

I mean, who is doing it? 

Mr. VILLANO. It can be either pot of money. I mean, we are looking at it as one pot of available funds and wherever we can best 

serve the needs of the applicant, we would try to fund it from either source. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
108 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Based upon a description of the area by which we 

are—great. Thank you. 

We have had a great debate, and I missed some of this, and it 

is great to have Commissioner Chong here because of what California has done on this whole unserved debate, which is just critical because there are areas that aren’t served and they need to be 

served, and I think that is the first place that we should be going, 

and I think my colleague from Ohio talked about the areas in his 

district. I have areas that aren’t served. I would just lobby in support of making sure that we connect everybody with something before—and I do know there is a speed issue too of what speed—you 

know, dial-up, I don’t think you can really call dial-up-only service 

being served. But if they have high speed, I am not sure—I would 

be careful about moving in that direction before you put money in 

the unserved areas. 

Mr. Seifert, if you already have access to 10 broadband maps, 

why not just distribute money based upon those areas first? 

Mr. SEIFERT. So one issue we have is making sure that the maps 

are telling us what we need to know. There are different levels of 

granularity. There are different issues that the different folks mapping looked at, and in order for us to have a national broadband 

map, we need to make sure that everybody is giving us—some of 

these folks may have to go back and tinker with what they have 

already done to submit that, so that is part of our focus right now 

is to get that information out. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And I would say it would make sense to me if we 

know, then we ought to put money there first. 

Ms. Chong, I kind of mentioned you earlier. Would you agree 

with some of those premises? 

Ms. CHONG. Yes, I would. I really think that we would have 

wasted some of our money if we hadn’t done our mapping first, and 

we learned it from Connect Kentucky because I went out there and 

did a field trip out there and I realized the importance of really 

knowing with granularity where those areas were, and they 

showed up in places you wouldn’t expect. I had an unserved area 

in the middle of Silicon Valley. I mean, why? But we filled that 

one. So you never know. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Yes, and we have had a lot of hearings on Connect 

Kentucky. Of course, the southern part of my district abuts Paducah so we have been following that, Connect SI, trying to do southern Illinois, trying to do very similar to that aspects, and that is 

why we know there are areas that aren’t served, period, and we 

know them now. 

My last question, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Villano, Mr. Seifert, Mr. 

Deutchman states we will have a consultative role in awarding of 

grants but they are also potential recipients. How will the agencies 

account for the conflict of interest? 

Mr. SEIFERT. I think asking the States, you know, their opinion 

about how things should be done is like asking the public how they 

believe things should be done. Many of the public that have submitted comment are going to be applying for grants. There are 

folks on this panel that are probably going to be applying for 

grants. So we can take all that public commentary and analyze it 

and then set up competitive criteria, a gold standard that you comVerDate Mar 15 2010 04:19 Apr 13, 2012 Jkt 067823 PO 00000 Frm 00114 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A823.XXX A823

jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
109 

pare all those applications coming in to. They have to meet the test 

that the statute sets out. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Okay, Mr. Chairman, if the other two can answer 

and I will be done. 

Mr. VILLANO. I would agree 100 percent with that. 

Mr. DEUTCHMAN. I would just—they will be making the grants 

what they perceive reasonable. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Yes, our biggest challenge is trying to follow the 

money and follow the money that you guys are apportioning 

through the States, and my guys at the grassroots level are trying 

to figure this out because we have people asking. Because I think 

we are going to be trying to account for the dollars as they get 

passed out. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WEINER. The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Space. 

Mr. SPACE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Mefford for being here and 

the good work that they have done, primarily with the mapping 

strategies, not just mapping, however, and is your father also involved in Connect Kentucky? 

Mr. MEFFORD. He is. He was actually one of the original organizers of the Connect Kentucky initiative. 

Mr. SPACE. Please extend to him my gratitude for his help. He 

has been to Ohio a couple of times to help with our projects. 

I have some technical questions I would like to direct to Mr. 

Seifert and Mr. Villano about the process, I think touching upon 

something that my colleague brought up earlier about the match, 

the 20 percent match. I am hopeful that you will undertake a liberal interpretation of the term ‘‘financial need’’, one that is not 

overly restrictive, because of the clear economic impact that this 

technology brings to an area and the fact that almost to, you know, 

every single region where you have got underserved areas, you 

have got poverty, and those are the areas most in need clearly, the 

poorer areas, that in many cases would not be able to afford the 

20 percent match. I am also hopeful that you will be willing in your 

interpretative process to broadly define the types of monies or services that can be applied toward that match, whether it is in-kind 

services or other grants, for example, the FCC grant that is now 

operating in the Southern Ohio Health Network. We would like to 

ensure that that could be seen as an offset because that is part, 

for example, our plan, our four-stage plan. So I am optimistic you 

will understand that the areas most in need are the last that 

should be precluded from qualifying because of their access to 

money. 

I am curious about the process. Well, I know that wasn’t a question. The questions that I have, have to do more with the process, 

and I know you are going to be going through this rulemaking 

process and we are going to have three levels of funding and all 

that, but at the point where someone or some entity or some group 

of folks may submit a plan to you, presumably sometime this summer, what kind of process do you envision? Who will be the final 

arbiter? What kind of deference will governors, for example, be 

given, local government officials? How do you envision that process 

from a more practical perspective panning out? 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
110 

Mr. SEIFERT. So again, we are hearing from folks about what 

they think we should do and one of the major comments they have 

made to us is, make it understandable for applicants. You shouldn’t 

have to be a very sophisticated applicant to apply. We should go 

to small communities. Innovators should be able to apply. So that 

is one of our driving concerns. The statute establishes some threshold criteria about how we need to evaluate these and then we are 

looking to what the public has said about other criteria. The statute doesn’t talk about deference to any particular body. It says look 

for sustainable, look for the greatest speed, the greatest populations, those sorts of, I think we would call just standards so that 

any application can stand next to any other application. You compare it to that standard and see how it matches up. Someone mentioned earlier a point system. You know, I could imagine where at 

the end of this notice and comment we say you get X points for the 

following things or you get a scale of zero to some points, but we 

are still trying to figure all that out. Our goal is to get that out 

in a way that is understandable and then after the rule comes out 

is to go out into the communities and do training on how the application works. 

Mr. SPACE. And do you envision an effort, a conscious effort to 

ensure that these funds are distributed on a relatively widespread 

and State-by-State equitable basis? I mean, obviously based on 

needs but is there going to be an intent to ensure that this is 

spread out, notwithstanding those standards? I understand you 

may have 10 or 12 worthwhile projects in central California but we 

would like to make sure that this money is evenly disbursed in 

those rural areas. Is there going to be a conscious effort to do that? 

Mr. SEIFERT. So the statute directs us to fund to the extent practicable at least one in every State, and that is a minimum from the 

statute and we intend to comply with that to the greatest extent 

possible. I would caution to say that although $7.2 billion sounds 

like a lot of money, when you divide it by 50 States, six territories 

and the District of Columbia, it works out to about $150 million 

apiece, and when you start looking at construction projects, middle 

mile facilities, you can burn through a lot of money very quickly. 

So I think our first desire and what we are hearing from public 

comment is to come up with standards that end up with proposals 

that stretch the dollars as far as possible, if they are using other 

Recovery Act funds, like if you are digging a road with some Department of Transportation funds and you can say we are going to 

lay the fiber at the same time so we have stretched the dollars that 

much further, but our goal is to make sure that we have sustainable projects so that when the economy does recover, people can go 

to that community and say this is how it needs to be done in the 

future. 

Mr. SPACE. The constraints of time prohibit me from getting into 

any more details. I would, however, look forward to having a meeting with you some time in the near future, either in your office or 

mine, if that would be acceptable. 

Mr. SEIFERT. It would be my pleasure. 

Mr. SPACE. Thank you. 

Mr. WEINER. I recommend going to his office, Mr. Seifert. 

Mr. Stupak, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
111 

Mr. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Villano, let me just—a couple things. You know, I keep hearing that the RUS program only funds the ILECs. Incumbent carriers don’t really help out the others. They don’t fund any wireless 

applications or wireless companies. And just looking at it and having been on the committee for a long time, what happens in my 

neck of the woods, that is probably true. The incumbents don’t 

want to come to my neck of the woods because there is not enough 

people up there, and the few places they will go might be the affluent city or two in my district but after that, they won’t go anywhere else. So I am really concerned. I know I have brought up repeatedly how before the changes were made in the RUS program 

in 2008, how some of these rather affluent communities got funded 

but we can’t get funding up in the more rural, sparsely populated 

areas. So I just want to make sure that—all right. Let me ask you 

this. Does RUS anticipate issuing regulations to implement the 

statutory changes in the 2008 Farm Bill be part of the final rule 

issued with NTIA? 

Mr. VILLANO. The 2008 Farm Bill regulations are in final clearance at the current time and we intend upon publishing an interim 

final rule within the next 60 to 90 days. The funding that we received under the Recovery Act basically exempted us from the 2008 

Farm Bill so it allows us to set up an entirely separate program. 

So that program will be doing NOFAs consistent with NTIA. We 

plan to do three NOFAs. 

Mr. STUPAK. So wireless will be welcome to apply and other than 

incumbents will be welcome to apply and receive funding? 

Mr. VILLANO. Right. Wireless has always been welcome. We are 

technology-neutral. We do wireless, we do broadband over power 

lines. 

Mr. STUPAK. That is what it says but in the application that really hasn’t been the way it has been. At least that is not my experience. Let me ask you this. RUS already has hundreds of millions 

of dollars available for broadband loans. 

Mr. VILLANO. Correct. 

Mr. STUPAK. Shouldn’t the emphasis of the stimulus dollars be 

on grants in the same vein as NTIA then? 

Mr. VILLANO. We have $2.5 billion of flexible budget authority 

that we are envisioning being able to do loans, grants and loangrant combinations. 

Mr. STUPAK. Right, but I am talking before the stimulus. We had 

all these pendings here before the stimulus was even passed. You 

had a lot of applicants there. Are they going to go with this new, 

more discretionary as in the economic recovery package or are they 

going to follow RUS? 

Mr. VILLANO. Under our existing broadband program, we have 

less than five applications pending. They are all waiting for the 

regulations for the 2008 Farm Bill. 

Mr. STUPAK. So they would go under the 2008 one even though 

they were pending prior to? 

Mr. VILLANO. Anybody that applied before the 2008 Farm Bill 

was enacted would be under the 2002 Farm Bill. We have two 

pending applications and both of those will be—a decision will be 

made on those shortly. We have been waiting for additional inforVerDate Mar 15 2010 04:19 Apr 13, 2012 Jkt 067823 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A823.XXX A823

jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
112 

mation from the applicants but there are only two carry-over applications from the 2002 Farm Bill and there are four applications 

under the 2008 Farm Bill. So not a heavy demand for the existing 

programs until the rules come out. 

Mr. STUPAK. Okay. A lot has been said about mapping. Mr. 

Mefford, let me ask you these questions. You receive information 

from the broadband providers to do your mapping, correct? 

Mr. MEFFORD. Yes, sir, that is correct. 

Mr. STUPAK. Okay. The government needs to add on broadband 

to inform its policy, to make up its policy decisions. I would note 

that it can also use data to target resources, and the more granular 

the data, the better the targeting. With that in mind, let me ask 

you this question. There are reports that the State cable and telephone association groups in North Carolina hired your company 

and your company has since tried to hinder North Carolina State 

agency ENC from doing this broadband mapping, which it had 

been doing since 2001, because your company refused to provide 

them the information they need. Also, I have heard that before it 

would consent to providing E North Carolina with the information, 

AT&T insisted that the State agency enter into a non-disclosure 

agreement. So can you explain to me your organization’s actions 

and how hindering the flow of information to State agencies is consistent with your testimony here today? 

Mr. MEFFORD. Yes, sir. I am happy to address that. With great 

respect, let me just say that the assessment of the North Carolina 

situation is not correct. We are actually partnering with ENC as 

the existing State entity to make sure that the information that we 

are now gathering from providers is going to be useful for their efforts to carry out much of the similar programs that we have discussed today. 

Mr. STUPAK. But if your providers are insisting on a non-disclosure, how can you provide the information then? 

Mr. MEFFORD. It is a great question and one that is broadly misunderstood. We actually in each of our—— 

Mr. STUPAK. Either you provide it or you don’t. 

Mr. MEFFORD. Well, no, there are different aspects of the data 

that remain protected and so for instance the latitude-longitude coordinates of where hardware exists is not information that we will 

provide, you know, as a database to anybody who wants to access 

it, but what we do is, we use those coordinates to determine where 

service is available from that hardware and that is how we create 

a footprint, a visual representation of where service is available. So 

that information, Congressman Stupak, is available on each of the 

State websites and so consumers and businesses can go there and 

validate it. We have ways for them to feed back on that to tell us 

if there are places where they see it as inaccurate and incorrect 

and we make those adjustments each time we receive that feedback. 

Mr. STUPAK. Well, if that is available, why would people hire you 

then? 

Mr. MEFFORD. No, we actually make it available. So we gather— 

the maps over to my right are from Minnesota and there is, you 

know, 104 broadband providers represented on that map and so we 

gather that data. It is not available in a single place otherwise 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
113 

until we gather it. And so once we gather it and we protect that 

very basic fundamental competitive data, we then again make it 

available in a visual representation of—— 

Mr. STUPAK. But you brought up Minnesota. Could the committee or the State of Minnesota then take a look at the raw data 

to determine whether discrepancies arise? Will you give them the 

raw data? 

Mr. MEFFORD. We have those non-disclosure agreements in place 

so—— 

Mr. STUPAK. So see, once again, you are blocking the availability. 

How about the committee? Will you make it available to the committee for Minnesota? 

Mr. MEFFORD. Now, what we can do, yes, sir, is make available 

this raw data that represents these footprints so we are absolutely 

willing to demonstrate the validity of that by having the committee 

look closely at that and welcome that opportunity. 

Mr. STUPAK. Well, if you are willing to provide it to the committee, why aren’t you willing to provide it to the State of Minnesota then? 

Mr. MEFFORD. They actually do have it. I mean, you could log on 

to the Connect Minnesota website, ConnectMN.org, and you can 

see the data that is there and you don’t have to be the State of 

Minnesota. I mean, you can be a consumer or company or anybody 

and you can do a household level search. 

Mr. STUPAK. So then your testimony today, you don’t mind providing that information to Minnesota? 

Mr. MEFFORD. We are providing it already, Congressman. 

Mr. STUPAK. So you are going to provide it to Minnesota then, 

yes or no? 

Mr. MEFFORD. It is on the Internet at ConnectMN—— 

Mr. STUPAK. I am not asking that. I am asking if you will provide it to Minnesota, yes or no? 

Mr. MEFFORD. We already have. I mean, we did—as soon as we 

published the first map for Minnesota, the State was the first to 

get a copy of it. 

Mr. STUPAK. Okay. They are telling us you are not giving it to 

them. 

Mr. MEFFORD. I mean, I would encourage the committee—I 

would be happy to provide the contact information of our State, you 

know, contract owner and the people we have liaised with there 

to—— 

Mr. STUPAK. So are you providing the map or just the raw data 

to them? 

Mr. MEFFORD. We are providing the map that includes the data 

that shows the footprints of where broadband is actually available, 

and again, Congressman, you can search—I mean, consumers can 

go and search down to a household level to see what data is available for a specific household level. 

Mr. STUPAK. Thank you. 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you, Mr. Mefford. I think Mr. Stupak raised 

a good point. I think this information that is gathered should be 

entirely in the public domain, A, as a check, but B, for instance, 

there is so much federal funding going into the collection of the 

data. 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
114 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. WEINER. The gentleman from Illinois. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Just to ask unanimous consent to have the letter 

written by the ranking member of the full committee, Joe Barton, 

and Cliff Stearns of the subcommittee be submitted for the record 

to the agencies along with their responses. 

Mr. WEINER. Without objection. 

The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Butterfield, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I wish 

our other chairman was here because I wanted to publicly thank 

him for his work on this subcommittee. He promised us that he 

would have a robust hearing today and this is obviously good work. 

The title of the hearing today is the oversight of the Recovery Act. 

We should have another word in there. I think we need to maximize the Recovery Act. The dollars are very limited, even though 

the public thinks that it is a lot of money, and it is, but we need 

to take what we have and get the most for our investment. 

Let me take off on where Mr. Stupak was a minute ago, and I 

think this is an appropriate area that we need to explore as a subcommittee. I don’t know very much about Connect Nation but from 

what I have been told, it is a very credible organization and you 

are doing good work across the country and I want to applaud you 

for what you are doing, but I am also concerned about some of the 

issues that have arisen in North Carolina, my State, and so I want 

you, please, if you could to be a little bit more specific and tell us 

more about your transparency in North Carolina and the reliability 

of the data that you have collected in North Carolina and specifically who you are interacting with with the ENC. 

Mr. MEFFORD. Yes, sir. Thank you for the question, and I am 

glad to provide the answer. I think there was a challenge in North 

Carolina to create the broadband map, much as we have talked 

about today, and I am not privy to all the reasons in the history 

to why that was the case, but as we have done these types of maps 

across the country, we have established a history, we have established a track record for being able to do this in a way that is inviting to providers to participate in the process, and the driver for 

that is, we approach it as a business development opportunity for 

providers. We want them to be able to use this information and 

again, this is of more benefit for smaller providers than it is larger 

providers. It puts smaller providers on equal footing from a market 

intelligence standpoint with their larger counterparts and so they 

can use that data to build a business case then to identify unserved 

areas and to identify household density in those areas and to use 

our information to help build a business case. So because we have 

been able to do that time after time after time in different States, 

we have that trusted relationship, that credibility that says we can 

get the job done. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. And broadband mapping is not rocket science. 

Mr. MEFFORD. It is not. That is exactly right. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. It can be done in 6 to 9 months, I think we 

heard earlier today. 

Mr. MEFFORD. That is exactly right, but it does require the trust 

of those who are voluntarily providing the data, and so that is what 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
115 

we are able to bring to the mix, and in your home State of North 

Carolina, that is where we stand with the provider community recognizing that they could bring us into the State and provide the information that the State has been after for so many years, and 

again, that is done to empower existing efforts, certainly not to 

hinder ENC. ENC has a great history and a proven track record, 

and there is no desire for our organization to hinder their work but 

quite the opposite, to empower it—— 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. To partner with them as well? 

Mr. MEFFORD. To partner in a way that gives them the information that they have been seeking and allows them to then, you 

know, come to NTIA and RUS with maps in hand that identify 

where those areas are. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Let me direct my next question to Ms. TurnerLee. Thank you very much for coming. I thank all of you for your 

testimony today. I realize it has been a long day for all of you, and 

I particularly apologize for the disruption. We had to go to the 

Floor for about an hour and now we are just about to finish up. 

Ms. Turner-Lee, as you probably know, I represent the eastern 

part of North Carolina. It is the fourth poorest district in the country in terms of median family income, and one of my 23 counties 

is called Green County, and you have some involvement and some 

experience in Green County and I want to thank you for that. In 

your written testimony, you made reference to the need to build a 

digital ecosystem that can support not only the installation of 

broadband but a culture of use of broadband, and that is very important. I would like you to just touch on the success that you have 

experienced in Green County and also to address the ability that 

we have to use the stimulus funds to replicate that model in other 

similar communities across the country. 

Ms. TURNER-LEE. Thank you. We don’t mind the wait. I think on 

behalf of the people here, it is a long time coming to actually talk 

about this, so thank you for acknowledging the time spent on this. 

You know, in Green County, that was a case where I think takes 

and captures the heart of a lot of the testimony you have heard 

today. There was a change in industry from tobacco to other opportunities that people were searching for and working hand and hand 

with stakeholders in the North Carolina area. We really worked on 

a plan and we were invited to come in and work alongside of those 

providers to make sure this worked, and what we introduced to 

them was the power of the Internet at that time, and this was a 

project that started a few years back. That thought and that idea 

of looking at the Internet as a way to change an economy led to 

the successes that we saw in Green County. Not only were former 

tobacco workers seeing the power of the Internet and seeing the 

power of economic development opportunities and being retrained 

on how to use the Internet, they were also using it to build a local 

economy. There is a story in Green County of signs on lawns of 

ways that people that could use the Internet to connect resources 

to one another. We had a section on the beehive, which was a community bartering section. It was the eBay of Green County where 

people were trading goods among each other. As a result of our efforts there, we have seen young people become less truant. We 

have seen reductions working hand in hand with the stakeholders 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
116 

there in teenage pregnancy. In fact, we honored a young person 

that came out of Green County who looked at his dyslexia not as 

a hindrance but as a way to use technology to talk to other people 

about how to solve that. I think the example of Green County demonstrates a few things that we need to capture going forward. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. You are going to have to wrap it up. The 

chairman is going to hit the gavel in just a second. 

Ms. TURNER-LEE. You know, again, stressing collaboration, 

transparency, ensuring that the ecosystem becomes institutionalized and it is not a case where we use this funding where we don’t 

look back and make the meter move on various things that we 

want do around this as it has been stated as a proof of concept but 

also as a way to move people that have been disconnected and detached. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Thank you. 

Mr. WEINER. Thank you, Mr. Butterfield. I yield myself a couple 

minutes here. Can I just ask, Mr. Large, do you have coaxial cable 

television in your area? 

Mr. LARGE. We have Comcast in the city of Stuart, which is the 

county seat, and then Citizens Internet provides to the one household that we spoke of, but other than that—— 

Mr. WEINER. No, but I mean, do you have cable television, traditional cable television in your area? 

Mr. LARGE. In the town of Stuart only. 

Mr. WEINER. And do you have landline telephones? 

Mr. LARGE. Yes. 

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Seifert, as a philosophical matter, probably the 

quickest way to get Mr. Large’s jurisdiction Internet access, 

broadband, is just to do DSL or have the cable company there provide the service, right? It is probably quicker than having a wireless outfit come in and wire the community. 

Mr. SEIFERT. I am not so sure that is the case because if that 

were the case and it could be done, I think Mr. Large would say 

that it already would have been done. 

Mr. WEINER. Well, there is the economic imperative. Perhaps one 

of the questions is whether what we are doing here is priming the 

pump for business to do what they should have been in the business of doing anyway. But from just pure expedience, if our object 

is to get as many people wired as quickly as possible, isn’t that 

probably the technologically fastest way to get it done? 

Mr. SEIFERT. Again, I don’t want to make a determination there 

because I don’t know if he is in a mountainous region where pointto-point access with fiber attached to the bottom of the towers 

would be a way to get it quicker and cheaper, and quicker I think 

has to encompass some sort of cost aspect. If we had unlimited 

funds, you know, there are all sorts of quick ways we could do it, 

but I don’t know enough about the topography and the folks and 

the sorts of things they are looking for. 

Mr. WEINER. But there is nothing that would disqualify them— 

I mean, I know the rules haven’t been made but nothing that 

would disqualify the local cable company or the local phone company saying you know what, we are going to amp up our traditional ISDN line and make it a DSL line in this community. There 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
117 

is nothing that prevents them from getting funds under this Act or 

bidding to be the service provider in that area? 

Mr. SEIFERT. So the statute says that there is a public interest 

test for for-profit companies to participate so that is one of the 

things that we in consultation with the FCC have to determine and 

we have received comment on that, but given that they have met 

that public interest test, then they can apply and present proposals 

for that. 

Mr. WEINER. Got you. So one of the things that you are not—we 

were just having a conversation while the question was going on. 

You are not trying to create necessarily—one of your imperatives 

is not to create jobs in the wiring of communities? 

Mr. SEIFERT. I think it is a benefit. If you think of Department 

of Transportation money building roads, one of the initial benefits 

is the folks actually building the roads but there are greater benefits that come from down the road from the investment. It is not 

just the building of the wire. 

Mr. WEINER. Right. It is the economic faucet that gets turned on 

from that. 

Mr. SEIFERT. Correct. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Chairman, can I just follow up on that? 

Mr. WEINER. Certainly. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. What about this debate on the wiring, the fiber 

wiring that is called the middle mile, which is, maybe there is access as you are talking about it but it is really the fiber connection 

from—I just got briefed today by folks who Newton, Illinois, is an 

unserved area but what they would like this money to go to is the 

fiber to connect to the fiber. Then they have access. Is there a discussion in that way? 

Mr. SEIFERT. I can tell you it is one of the Administration’s priorities in this program, it has been expressed, that middle mile provides the opportunity for unconnected communities or communities 

that are not as connected as much as they would like to be to get 

to the Internet, and the more folks you can get involved in that, 

community centers, hospitals, public safety, they help fund the viability and the sustainability. We talked about sustainability, the 

sustainability of that project. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Chairman, can Commissioner Chong just follow up on that? 

Mr. WEINER. Certainly. 

Ms. CHONG. Thank you. I was just chomping at the bit. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I could tell. 

Ms. CHONG. Well, the middle mile is critical because for the 

unserved areas, the main reason the carriers tell me they are not 

there already is they can’t get an Internet point of presence close 

enough, so that is the critical piece, and the point is, if you put the 

fiber in going out to the unserved area, it is really expensive, and 

so in our program we did allow the cost to be reimbursed but we 

had them proportion it between how much goes to serving the 

unserved and underserved area versus currently served people. 

Now, the other thing I wanted to add is, we are leveraging the California Telehealth Network money, which we got through a $22 

million grant from the FCC pilot program, and that was critical because that will help push this middle mile farther out into the 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
118 

rural areas where these rural health care networks are that we are 

connecting and that will make a huge difference. So the last thing 

to add is, we are also looking at the health IT money, the electronic 

records, and we will parlay some of that into the project. So we are 

trying to grab every possible pot to make this happen but fiber is 

really critical and it should be paid for. 

Mr. WEINER. Let me just conclude with this thought, and I think 

it represents the aspirations of both sides of the aisle. You know, 

we had an experience after September 11, Homeland Security 

money, we all knew we wanted to improve safety. We dumped a 

lot of money out there and we found out years later it wasn’t terribly well spent, it wasn’t terribly well thought through. You know, 

the political ideal that we all have of wanting to get the service, 

the economic idea, if we don’t get this right, the political will is 

going to evaporate pretty quickly on doing things like this in the 

future so there is an enormous amount of burden on you, and we 

have talked a lot about the stimulus, being a necessity to do things 

quickly and we have already had a remarkable number of hearings 

in a brief period of time. The rulemaking is moving along with 

alacrity. But it is very, very important, I think, that at the end of 

this process people say you know what, not only do we get service 

to people that didn’t have it, it made economic sense, it worked, 

people were seeing the benefits, because if we are going to push 

this envelope in next generations of Congress trying to figure out 

how you expand it even more, this is going to be the laboratory 

that a lot of people are going to look to for arguments pro and con. 

So I thank you very much all of you for your testimony. I thank 

you for being so patient while we had the series of votes. I ask 

unanimous consent to include for the record a memo from the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council. Without objection. 

Mr. WEINER. I would also ask that members have to revise and 

extend their mark. We will keep the record open. I thank you all. 

This committee hearing is closed. 

[Whereupon, at 1:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:] 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
119 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 130 here 67823A.070
120 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 131 here 67823A.071
121 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 132 here 67823A.072
122 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 133 here 67823A.073
123 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 134 here 67823A.074
124 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 135 here 67823A.075
125 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 136 here 67823A.076
126 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 137 here 67823A.077
127 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 138 here 67823A.078
128 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 139 here 67823A.079
129 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 140 here 67823A.080
130 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 141 here 67823A.081
131 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 142 here 67823A.082
132 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 143 here 67823A.083
133 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 144 here 67823A.084
134 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 145 here 67823A.085
135 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 146 here 67823A.086
136 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 147 here 67823A.087
137 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 148 here 67823A.088
138 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 149 here 67823A.089
139 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 150 here 67823A.090
140 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 151 here 67823A.091
141 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 152 here 67823A.092
142 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 153 here 67823A.093
143 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 154 here 67823A.094
144 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 155 here 67823A.095
145 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 156 here 67823A.096
146 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 157 here 67823A.097
147 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 158 here 67823A.098
148 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 159 here 67823A.099
149 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 160 here 67823A.100
150 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 161 here 67823A.101
151 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 162 here 67823A.102
152 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 163 here 67823A.103
153 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 164 here 67823A.104
154 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 165 here 67823A.105
155 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 166 here 67823A.106
156 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 167 here 67823A.107
157 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 168 here 67823A.108
158 


jbell on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 169 here 67823A.109