Ball State University is trying to catch President-elect Barack Obama’s attention with an economic-stimulus proposal that the university says could create 200,000 jobs in three months. The proposal, formulated by the university’s Digital Policy Institute, would bring broadband services to rural areas, which the university says will spawn manufacturing, construction, and technology jobs.
The university has enlisted the help of a Washington-based telecommunications firm to lobby Congress to have the proposal considered as part of President-elect Obama’s economic-stimulus package.
Ball State officials estimate that their plan would bring high-speed Internet service to the roughly four million households that do not have access to affordable broadband. That, officials argue, would improve quality of life for rural residents by increasing access to online-education programs and online health-care services.
Two Ball State professors working on the proposal said they had already found a way to pay for their plan: the Universal Service Fund, created in 1997 by the federal government to ensure equitable access to telecommunication services.
“I’d call our proposal ‘pre-shovel ready’ because the funds will go directly to the rural telephone companies,” Michael Hicks, director of Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research, said in a written statement released by the university. “Other plans would have to get filtered through government agencies and would take months to roll out, and that’s not what our country needs right now.” —David Shieh
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