California PUC conditionally funds start up cooperative's middle mile project

The California Public Utilities Commission has demonstrated its support of start up telecom cooperatives -- entities this blogger believes play a crucial role in the rapid expansion of advanced telecommunications infrastructure in areas that are not sufficiently profitable for incumbent providers.

In a resolution adopted earlier this week, the CPUC agreed to fund 19 percent of the California Broadband Cooperative's planned open access wholesale middle fiber project along 448 miles of Highway 395 in the Golden State's Eastern Sierra area including the counties of Mono, Inyo, Eastern Kern and San Bernardino. Coop membership is open to local governments, institutions and Internet Service Providers.

The 19 percent funding level is beyond the 10 percent level the CPUC established in July in an effort to utilize its $100 million California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to leverage $7.2 billion in federal subsidies for broadband telecommunications infrastructure allocated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The CASF funding is contingent on the project being approved for ARRA funding.

In the initial round of ARRA broadband funding that closed in August, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) generally required project grant applicants to put up a 20 percent funding match. In an effort to get more California projects funded, CASF kicked in half the match amount, bringing total project funding up to 90 percent. That left it to applicants to come up with the remaining a 10 percent match.

However, the California Broadband Cooperative noted as a start up nonprofit with no financial history it would find it all but impossible to come up with the 10 percent match for its proposed $101.4 million project under grant and loan subsidies for broadband infrastructure construction under the BTOP and the USDA's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) program.

Kudos to the California PUC for recognizing that alternative, nonprofit business models like cooperatives are needed in the quest to close the digital divide in California and that these entities face unique and substantial start up funding challenges. As the NTIA and USDA draw up new rules governing an upcoming and final round of funding for broadband infrastructure projects early next year, the agencies should keep the California PUC's action in mind.