Broadband Hearing a Dissapointment?

So Business Week was less than thrilled with yesterday's hearing, I hear:

At the first public discussion of the Obama Administration's much heralded broadband plan, government officials offered virtually no hard answers to the hundreds of people who gathered in person and the 2,500 more who participated via live Web video. For almost every substantive question about how the billions will be allocated, officials said they're looking for guidance from the public. Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, NTIA associate administrator, said the government is seeking input on "nearly every facet of the program."

I'd agree that the officials assembled provided very little specific guidance (or even guidelines), but I was hardly surprised. The event went like this:

Gov't Official: We've got money. Here's our timeline for disbursing it. Tell us how we should do that.

Earnest-looking Would-be Applicant: Do you have a preference for multi-juridictional applications?

GO: You tell us. We're looking for input on that. And however many applicants you put together, consider asking for $$ from more than one agency; that's what we're looking for: collaborative grant awarding.

Another EWA: How about platforms? Is there a preference for wifi? Fiber? Fibre? DSL?

GO: Yes, tell us about your preferences.

Another nuther EWA: What about this urban-rural thing? What do suburban providers like me do?

NTIA GO: Let's let the USDA handle that one.

USDA GO: Yes, we handle rural stuff. But urban agriculture is all the rage these days, so game on! Tell us where to draw the line.

And so on.

I'm not surprised in the least that Business Week saw it as a disappointment. But the first step is figuring out how to change the federal approach to this problem. The funding and oversight mechanisms that exist are probably not suited to the task, so the first step is that those agencies learn how to work across their stovepipes. And they communicated an interest in doing just that. I found it encouraging...