WiMax, Rural Broadband, the Spectrum Auction and the USDA
Om Malik is reporting a MAJOR investment by the USDA in a mystery company called Open Range Communications. The company secured USDA financing to the tune of $267 million for the purpose of rolling out BroadBand to Rural Areas. This announcement comes fast on the heels of two other news events– the wrapup of the Spectrum Auction, and Sprint’s WiMax possibly hooking up with Clearwire with Intel, Google, BestBuy and others lending support.
The company that is the benficiary of this USDA largesse is a cipher. Their website is a placeholder page with an email link to a PR firm, Percepture. Percepture is located in Parsippany NJ, the heart of Telecom country (and only around 10 miles, as the crow flies, from the Verizon Operations Center in Basking Ridge NJ) and according to O’Dwyer’s, represents the Telecom industry. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it does lead one to wonder who exactly OWNS Open Range Communications.
One can only hope that this is something good, especially since Pennsylvania is mentioned prominently as one of the states that will benefit. And we REALLYREALLYREALLY NEED another Broadband Pipe, especially to rural areas, which have either one cable provider (if they’re lucky) expensive and restrictive Satellite Broadband or dialup as the only possible choices currently. However, Verizon already has a stranglehold on most of this State. A Verizon shill company offering an “alternative” wouldn’t exactly mean competition, would it?
Dave Burstein of DSLPrime commented on Om’s blogpost, “I don’t know this outfit, but am glad someone like you is looking for the details. Many of the USDA loans have gone to projects based on nearly impossible to achieve subscriber rates. Others are political. The result: an enormous percentage of the RUS loans went into early default.” I just did a google on USDA loan defaults, and came up with this gem in the Washington Post, and PA figures highly in the article about USDA loan defaults as well, by sheer coincidence. And the USDA is not known for its beneficence to anyone not politically connected, nor for its honest dealings, and in fact has been a prime conduit for political payoffs.
Methinks this has a carrion stink that smells like a Telecomm backroom deal. Given that AT&T and Verizon just spent megabillions on Spectrum that is now maybe shown to be worth less than they paid, especially given Google’s immediate Whitespace Push, the timing on this might be just a bit . . . suspect.
I hope we’re all wrong. I hope rural areas in the US get acceptable broadband. I really do.
03/31/08, 9:07 PM |
[…] I wrote about the Gigantic Guaranteed Loan that the USDA had given out to a company named Open Range Communications to string Wimax across Rural America, including my current home state of PA. Turns out that the head of the company, whose name is […]