The announcement of billions of dollars for rural and underserved broadband initiatives from the stimulus packages – on top of the existing funding through RUS and other agencies has many of us anticipating large, new opportunities. In press announcements, marketing material, vendor websites you see new entrants positioning themselves to take advantage of this perceived windfall. While this is an expected reaction in our market driven system, the reality is that unless you are already on the RUS approved vendor list, have relationships already established with the relevant system integrators and are supporting technologies that can be deployed within the prescribed timelines (subtracting the time taken for the politicians and funding agencies to actually deploy the money to the relevant projects) the opportunity is not really addressable – despite the best in marketing hype.

 

Let’s look at these one at a time:

 

A requirement for RUS funding is to be on the RUS approved vendor list. Seems simple, but like any other approvals process it takes time and is only open to those that meet the requirements – most notably have products that meet the Buy American and related trade agreements by being manufactured in America, Canada, Mexico or Israel. If you don’t already have such manufacturing set up then the timeline required to establish the localization of the manufacturing will likely exceed the timelines outlined in the stimulus requirements – grant applications completed by Sept 2010 and project completion within 2 years of grant approval.

 

Applying for government funding is not for the faint of heart. Those who have been involved with the process before the stimulus funding was announced will have a significant advantage in knowing whom to approach, how to process the application, what is likely to be approved. This process knowledge, perhaps more than the technical merits of a given solution, will be important in securing funding and getting projects deployed. Further the recipients of these projects will not be people or organizations that are used to owning and operating broadband infrastructure – almost by definition – since the projects are targeted at underserved areas. To this end they will rely heavily on system integrators who can perform the complex technical and logistical task of bringing together technologies and manpower from multiple sources to successfully implement a new network. Given the timelines involved the consultants and integrators are going to go to the ecosystem which they have worked with in the past in order to expedite the work. Developing new relationships always takes time – a luxury that may not be available in this environment.

 

Finally, the technology has to be shovel ready. Preference will be given to solutions and technologies that can be rapidly deployed and are well suited to rural and underserved environments. There is no time to develop new products, wait for the next release of the product, or even in many cases do extensive civil works to lay new infrastructure. Nor do the end users have time to do extensive interoperability testing between different elements of the network. To this end, those with advanced packet radio product offerings who also have proven interoperability with the base stations and IP switches required in the total solution will be very well placed to meet the goals of the funding agencies.

 

In summary, the stimulus monies have the potential to dramatically improve the productivity of the underserved areas of the country by enabling broadband penetration. The beneficiaries of these construction projects however are likely to be predominantly those who were already involved in building these kinds of networks before the stimulus package was ever conceived. In some ways it is appropriate that those who were doing this before it became popular will be the ones to benefit from the stimulus tidal wave.