Feds turn down City’s wifi proposal
The City of Cleveland’s proposal for a $15 million Federal stimulus grant to build a public wireless broadband network is officially out of the running, at least for now.
On Friday the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration added status information to the individual application pages at Broadband USA. The City of Cleveland’s page now says: “Status Application Not Funded”.
Apparently the City’s project was one of about 1,400 that drew “Thank, but no thanks” letters last week from the NTIA last week. About 400 (or maybe fewer) are still under consideration for funding from the agency’s first-round pool of $1.4 billion.
The City can try again. NTIA has announced a second funding round, which will award up to $2.4 billion broadband stimulus dollars by September 30. The proposal deadline for Round 2 is March 15.