AMES, Iowa -- President Obama has mandated a detailed strategy for achieving and ensuring affordable universal broadband access for all Americans, and the Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) -- created through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- is designed to do just that. The program will award $4.7 billion dollars in grants for sustainable broadband development projects and be administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) under the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Jeff Blevins, an assistant professor in Iowa State University's Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, is serving as a federal BTOP grant reviewer. He volunteered for the position because he sees the program being vitally important to the nation's ability to communicate.
"This should be the information superhighway finally coming into fruition, or at the very least, that it goes all places -- and it hasn't to this point," said Blevins, who teaches "Electronic Media Technology and Public Policy" at ISU. "But I'm also excited about this principle of universal service -- that everyone should have access to this. The program really stands for universal service.
"The development and sustainability of broadband services is such a vital issue -- not only for our economy, but also for our democracy," he added.
Answering the reviewer call
Blevins applied to become a reviewer after learning that the NTIA was seeking applicants. Upon being approved, he had to go through an online training seminar to become one of approximately 1,000 reviewers.
He is currently reviewing his first eight applications to determine their potential for sustainable broadband development. He says the key funding criteria is that the proposal be self-sustaining -- continuing to provide access after the grant money has been used. He expects many applications to come from education and library sources within the public sector.
Blevins was especially pleased to see that "network neutrality" was made implicit in the grant program. He defines neutrality as the idea that Internet service providers should afford open interconnection among content providers and users of the network, so that those who control access to the network do not censor lawful content or enact discriminatory routing of content. The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on a net neutrality plan Thursday.
"Whether the Internet remains neutral has significant implications for the participatory-democratic nature of the medium, the free flow of information and speech, user's privacy rights, Internet governance, efficacy of independent media, and political participation, as well the continued vitality of libraries and educational systems," Blevins said. "Given these stakes, I would go as far as saying that network neutrality may well be the telecommunication policy issue of the 21st century. To say the least, it has become one of the most prominent policy concerns for lawmakers, the telecommunications industries, as well as media reformers and scholars."
Blevins sees universal access to broadband services being important to rural areas of Iowa.
"The stimulus funds provided in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 targets 'unserved' and 'underserved' areas of the United States, which are often rural communities that tend to be overlooked by commercial broadband providers -- especially for fiber-optic delivery," he said. "Inherently, this affects Iowa, and it's possible that communities within the state may directly benefit from BTOP."
Broadband access benefits all Americans
And even though the government's attempt to extend broadband access may not have received the same exposure as its recent digital television conversion, Blevins sees it having much greater impact to all Americans.
"Broadband is that -- it's a lot of information and it's speed," he said. "There's no digital cliff [limited reception from digital TV waves] to worry about as there is with digital television, and this could be the tipping point for television delivery.
"In many cases, it's faster, it's a better picture, and it's on-demand," he added. "Here, I think the possibilities are unlimited to not only have that kind of entertainment transfer, but information transfer -- especially when you think of libraries and the educational sector."
Blevins reports that the reviewing process will conclude this fall, with the stimulus funds needing to be dispersed by the end of the 2010 fiscal year.