$6 billion for broadband
Here's the language in the American Recovery and Reinvestment plan as it stands today;
Broadband to Give Every Community Access to the Global Economy
• Wireless and Broadband Grants: $6 billion for broadband and wireless services in underserved areas to strengthen the economy and provide business and job opportunities in every section of America with benefits to e-commerce, education, and healthcare. For every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment.
Roughly $100 million per state (dividing by 50 and heroically rounding). The devil's in the details, but we better get ready to elbow our way through the line.
February 16th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
[...] • But the big—BIG!—glaring omission form the list is the undergrounding of all those overhead wires crisscrossing old island Alameda! Our entire infrastructure overhead is crumbling! We have utility poles in Alameda that look like they are hundred years old, and probably are. We readily complain about houses that are hundred years old, some as far as calling them blighted, yet a rotten wood pole with a hornet’s nest of wires ten feet above our heads we somehow find acceptable. Even if we didn’t have to think about all the sacrifices we need to do make to accommodate those ugly overhead utilities, by damaging our existing trees and planning future ones around the them, that project alone would be a major step in bringing us into the 21st century. Once we get there, we may even dip a toe into a “shovel-ready” broadband project, like the one talked about here. [...]