Washington
As the federal government prepares to pour billions of stimulus dollars into increased broadband Internet access, universities are trying to claim much of the money and shape the emerging national networking policy.
Their focus is $4.7-billion that will be doled out under a new grant program administered by a small Commerce Department agency called the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In Congressional testimony this month, a senior official with the agency, which is known as the NTIA, described the project as "the first step in realizing President Obama's vision of bringing the benefits of broadband technology to all Americans."
Several higher-education information-technology groups are now working to influence the national broadband strategy through private conversations with agency officials and a white paper, "Unleashing Waves of Innovation: Transformative Broadband for America's Future," filed with the NTIA.
One of those groups is Internet2, a high-speed networking consortium with more than 200 universities as members. Its vice president for external relations, Gary R. Bachula, reminded The Chronicle this week that universities helped give birth to the Internet and were instrumental in its development. For those and other reasons, he said, "the right way to construct a national broadband strategy is to have higher ed lead it."
Mark Tolbert, a spokesman for the telecommunications agency, said it would be premature to comment on a potential university role because the agency is still reviewing public input and drawing up rules for the grant-application process. But one telecommunications analyst predicted the NTIA would be unlikely to grant universities control of the bulk of the money, either directly or as gatekeepers. And even among academics, views differ as to what role universities should play.
Dual Role Proposed
The plan Mr. Bachula described involved two flanks. One goal, Mr. Bachula said, is to secure roughly $1-billion for universities to improve their network infrastructure and form partnerships to bring broadband into surrounding communities.
This bandwidth-boosting upgrade would help universities engage in new scientific experiments that require huge international movement of data, distribute their knowledge in new ways through distance education, and make medical care available to rural areas through video.
All of this, Mr. Bachula argued, will lead to innovation that is good for the economy. Students and faculty members working in the superpowered Internet will create the next wave of innovation, just as they did with Internet-based companies like Google and Facebook.
The balance of the $4.7-billion would flow through states, said Mr. Bachula. But even there, Mr. Bachula argued that university-led local networks should get a lead role. They are well positioned to achieve one aim of the new broadband program: connecting public facilities like elementary and secondary schools, hospitals, community centers, and police stations. Education and research networks within the states have already made some of those connections, Mr. Bachula noted. New York's Nysernet, for example, is a nonprofit organization that has strung fiber linking institutions around the state.
So if you want to upgrade the broadband connections of that class of institutions, the argument goes, don't start from scratch. Build on what existing university-run networks have created.
Many Vying Candidates
But how do colleges' goals fit with those of the NTIA program? And how realistic are their hopes for so much money?
The federal agency's program seeks to bring broadband access to both "unserved" areas (like rural communities) and "underserved" areas (which nobody has defined yet). Congress cast a wide net regarding what entities and programs would be eligible to apply for money. The stimulus bill refers to schools, libraries, health-care providers, public-safety agencies, urban-renewal groups, groups that serve low-income and elderly populations, community colleges, and other institutions of higher education.
Universities may have a "compelling claim" to some of the money, said Rebecca Arbogast, a telecommunications analyst with the financial-services company Stifel Nicolaus.
But she stressed that they are only one group. The NTIA will most likely spread the money to a mix of different entities, she said. Those might include community-service nonprofit groups, local governments, and rural phone companies.
"I would expect that there's going to be probably a greater emphasis on getting broadband out to places that don't have any broadband access at all," Ms. Arbogast said.
One university official argued that colleges should not contort the government's goals. Lev S. Gonick, vice president for information-technology services at Case Western Reserve University, said that "the idea that somehow the universities, enlightened as we are, should have the audacity to tell the community around us how we are going to help them build out their part of the NTIA, if only they support our billion-dollar ask for helping ourselves, I think is kind of chutzpah."
The way to approach the program is to see how the university can be a partner helping the community with its needs, not a "benevolent czar," he said.
"The truth of the matter," Mr. Gonick added, is that universities, in many regards, are "privileged, and not underserved and unserved. So let's get it right. If we're going to be genuine about our overture to engage, then let's start from what the policy objective is and not contort it."
