The Challenges of Rural Grants

Kudos to Gary for the article below, and for the comment that the complexity of the grant process below stifles competition and innovation.

Anybody assembling a grant also needs to avoid areas covered by other federal grants like the CAF reverse auction, ReConnect, e-Connectivity, Community Connect, and Broadband USA that have been awarded and that are not as easily identifiable as RDOF.

 

To make matters more confusing, some of these older grants will continue to be awarded this year, probably without paying attention to grant applications in these many other grants. Some smaller telcos are still building fiber networks that were funded by the FCC’s ACAM program – and clearly should be off-limits to federal grant money.

And all this, plus the Census Block tangle, is prior to any grant rules and programs that might be present in current Infrastructure Bills in Congress.