Rural America Goes Ultra-Digital
Of course, some providers' plans may be bigger than their capabilities. And the process for securing federal money actually does seem to encourage carriers to talk a big game: The money will be doled out by administrators at the Department of Commerce and the Department of Agriculture, and Calix's Burke suggests the larger-than-expected spending proposals may be a gambit on the part of rural operators to win the attention of those agencies.
But more than half of the providers surveyed by Calix say the stimulus money would represent less than 40% of the capital expenditures for their broadband projects. Burke says that means most of these companies were already planning to spend big money on stimulus, and the federal money is indeed going to expand the scope of the operators' efforts -- and thus, expand the job-creation opportunities.
The enthusiasm shown by the small to mid-sized rural providers in the survey strikes a very different tone from the comments made by their big brothers, such as AT&T, Verizon or Comcast, all of whom have hinted they might drop out of the grant race altogether if the government tries to impose too many restrictions on the grant recipients' business practices. (Some of this, undoubtedly, is part of the political process.) "If regulations are onerous, then yes, it will slow down investment," says Bruce Mehlman, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, a trade group.
But unlike the biggest broadband providers, which are based in large metropolitan areas, many of the operators surveyed by Calix are headquartered in the communities they serve. As a result, the executives of rural operators may have an added reason for wanting to get broadband out to their towns: if they don't do it, they'll hear about it from their neighbors.