Small Cable Operators Sought $1.3 Billion in Broadband Aid
Small cable operators with rural systems applied for $1.3 billion in NTIA and RUS grants and loans for last-mile and middle-mile broadband projects in unserved and underserved areas, the American Cable Association said. Applications were made by 83 of the companies, including NewWave Communications, NPG Cable and Wave Broadband, all closely held, the ACA said late Thursday. Large, publicly traded cable operators including Cablevision and Time Warner Cable said they didn’t plan to apply.
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More ACA members would have applied if there hadn’t been funding restrictions, said the association, echoing larger cable operators and telcos. Without a requirement that the government hold the first lien on projects receiving federal money -- which would have violated terms of loans that many operators already have -- and a ban for 10 years on selling the projects, “the turnout would have been greater,” the group said. It said it hopes that “onerous restrictions” will be canceled before applications for the second round of awards are due.
The applications filed “truly cover the gamut” of proposed uses, ACA President Matt Polka said in an interview. Proposals for last-mile projects include building systems in areas without broadband service, and middle-mile work seeks to improve transmission speeds, he said. “Many of our member systems … have subscribers that have access to broadband perhaps at a slower speed” because networks that link cable operators to the Internet don’t have enough capacity, and the members’ operations “are built to accommodate more,” Polka said.
The availability of broadband service in some small communities is limited to what’s provided to a cable operator by a telco that may use only a T-1 or DS3 line, Polka said. That means cable broadband subscribers get the equivalent of “a limited-capacity DSL,” he said. And “frankly, because those providers are perhaps the only backbone providers in the marketplace, they charge a lot higher for connectivity at what is lower capacity.” - Jonathan Make