D.C. CTO Says NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth Left Out a Key Detail in Her WSJ Takedown
‘Here’s the twist: These locations were identified by the federal government, not the District of Columbia,” said D.C. Chief Technology Officer Stephen N. Miller. Roth: That's not the whole story.
BEAD: Did NTIA provide the whole story about D.C. BEAD funding? A D.C. official is saying no. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on March 9, NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth embarrassed the D.C. government for seeking $70,000 per location to provide broadband to just a handful of locations “despite many broadband providers already operating in the city.” After some back and forth, D.C. dropped the per-location cost to $6,000. Curious about the steep cost decline, Roth, her Chief of Staff Brooke Donilon, and her Chief Counsel David Brodian hopped into a minivan for a quick inspection tour of six unserved locations that took all of two hours away from their Herbert C. Hoover Building headquarters to finish. They found none of the locations was meritorious and then zeroed out D.C.’s original BEAD funding request of $4 million. In a March 14 letter to the WSJ’s editor, D.C. Chief Technology Officer Stephen N. Miller said Roth omitted a key point: “These locations were identified by the federal government, not the District of Columbia.” (More after paywall)
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