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Qwest seeks $350M from stimulus for rural broadband Greg Avery March 26, 2010 Qwest
Communications International Inc.
said Thursday it is applying for a $350 million federal stimulus
grant to help it extend high-speed Internet service to rural
areas of its local phone-service region.
The Denver-based
telecom (NYSE: Q) had signaled in January that it was
reconsidering its earlier decision not to apply for available
rural-broadband funds under the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act because of what it called unrealistic rules.
But those rules were later revised. (DBJ
report.) Qwest now will ask for the stimulus funds to
cover 75 percent of the cost of a planned $467 million project
to extend broadband service with download speeds of 12 to 40
megabits per second (Mbps) to more than half a million homes,
schools, businesses and hospitals in rural communities in
Qwest's 14-state service territory. Qwest would cover the
remaining $117 million itself.
The stimulus funds
would come from the "Broadband Initiatives Program" administered
by the Rural
Utilities Service,
an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The $7.2
billion program's goal is to promote efforts to expand access to
tens of millions of people who lack broadband and who live
within 60 miles of a city or town. "Much like the water and electric programs the
government established to encourage rural development, federal
grants are needed to enable the deployment of broadband to
high-cost, unserved areas," Steve Davis, Qwest senior VP of
public policy and government relations, said in a statement. The company expects that the Rural Utilities
Service will consider the latest round of broadband-grant
applications over the summer and award grants by Sept. 30. Last year, Qwest and other major broadband
providers — AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and regional telecoms —
snubbed the first round of broadband stimulus grants and
low-interest loans, saying that rules for the program then in
effect made participation economically unrealistic. "The good news is that they seem to have heard
us in Originally, Qwest would have been eligible to
have only half of its broadband infrastructure expansion project
funded. Now, in the second round of funding, stimulus funding
would cover up to 75 percent of the project if Qwest's
application is OK'd. Qwest's service
territory covers The DBJ's Greg
Avery contributed reporting | Compiled by Mark Harden
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