Don’t doubt the success of the federal government’s wide-ranging broadband stimulus launched ntwo years ago, program officials sai d. NTIA Administrator Larry Strick ling gathered representatives from nfour of its 224 Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grantees at the Bro okings Institution Jan. 16 nto discuss different projects' virtue s, lessons learned and as Strickling said, “to demonstrate the successes” nand “humanize” the $4-billion stimulus investment with “tangible” details of how the different projects nwork. The message glossed over past concerns, such as overbuild ing (STRR Sept 28 p1), accountability n(STRR Nov 12 p20) and, in the past year, partial suspension of eight of the program’s largest infrastruc-nture grantees — seven in May due to FirstNet co mpatibility concerns (STRR Aug 17 p4) and one in De-ncember (STRR Dec 21 p8) du e to compliance problems. The event coincided with NTIA’s 15th quarterly nBTOP update to Congress (http://xrl.us/boa3z2).
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