WASHINGTON, February 13, 2010 – The snowstorm that shut much of Washington down this past week will not change the due date for Round 2 broadband stimulus applications, nor will it delay the naming of Round 1 winners, federal officials said Friday.

Speaking at a “Broadband Stimulus Town Hall Workshop Webcast,” National Telecommunications and Information Administration Senior Advisor Angela Simpson assured the panelists that the Commerce Department does not believe that the March 15 due date for Round 2 stimulus applications is in jeopardy.

Rural Utilities Service Deputy Administrator Jessica Zufolo said that the agency has dedicated $300 million in Round 1 awards, and is on target for its end-of-February deadline for making awards public.

WASHINGTON, January 20, 2010 – The National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Wednesday continued its rolling award of broadband stimulus grants, doling out $63 million for four broadband grants in Massachusetts, Michigan and North Carolina.

With the announcements, the NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service have awarded $253 million in broadband stimulus grants, or about 3.5 percent of the total broadband stimulus funds. The money has been spent on 23 projects so far, or an average of $11 million per grant.

The largest winners in Tuesday’s announcements were the Merit Network in Michigan, which won $33 million; and MCNC in North Carolina, which won $28.2 million. Both were for infrastructure grants to build fiber-optic networks within their states, connecting households and anchor institutions to broadband facilities.

WASHINGTON, December 17, 2009 – The broadband stimulus projects identified in a White House report issued Wednesday, and embargoed for release Thursday, include the following:

WASHINGTON, December 17, 2009 – The White House announced that $182 million in federal funding for broadband stimulus funding will be dispensed Thursday by Vice President Joe Biden at Impulse Manufacturing in the rural town of Dawsonville, Ga.

The initial grants are the first of a $2 billion disbursement in broadband funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act over the next 75 days, the White House said.

The funding, said the White House, is “to bring broadband to communities that currently have little or no access to the technology.”

WASHINGTON, October 12, 2009 – The National Telecommunications and Information Administration last week awarded the first four broadband data and mapping grants to organizations that are not Connected Nation.

WASHINGTON, September 1, 2009 – State and local governments said during a Federal Communications Commission workshop on Tuesday that extending broadband is important for economic development purposes.

WASHINGTON, June 9, 2009 – Overly interventionist legislation could severely threaten the way Americans interact and conduct business on the Internet, NetChoice President Steve DelBianco said on a call to announce the group’s new initiative: Internet Advocates’ Watchlist for Ugly Laws (iAWFUL).

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2009 – As the Obama administration on Monday begins poring over the nitty-gritty details about how they will be spending $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds, individual states are grappling to find their own best strategies to tap the funds.

DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA, March 14, 2009 – More than 120 people from across North Carolina convened last Saturday here for a “town hall”-style meeting, by InternetforEveryone.org, seeking to raise the profile about the importance of broadband in the lives of everyday citizens. The next town hall is May 14 in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON, February 18, 2009 – Art Brodsky, communications director at Public Knowledge, has just posted a second piece about Connected Nation. For more than a year, BroadbandCensus.com has been presenting an alternative to the proprietary-information model of Connected Nation.