Friday Q&A: Broadband biz strategist Craig Settles talks Digital Philadelphia future

The City of Philadelphia’s Division of Technology was handed a tremendous setback last week.

The city has been taking serious steps to move beyond Wireless Philadelphia and to develop a new plan of action to help bridge the digital divide, what the DOT calls Digital Philadelphia. In August, it submitted a broadband grant proposal to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration – as did 2,200 other groups – with hopes of grabbing a slice of $4.7 billion being given out for broadband initiatives as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the broadband stimulus fund.

Because of the tremendous influx of applications, the NTIA turned over some of the decision-making process to state governments. Last week, the Governor’s Office offered recommendations to federal agencies promoting two dozen broadband stimulus grants, including six from the Philadelphia region, as we reported.

And to the surprise of many, the City’s $21 million dollar middle mile infrastructure project was not recommended. Its Free Library-sponsored $14 million broadband adoption program was given an honorable mention, so to speak, but the state’s recommendations certainly cast doubt on the Digital Philadelphia vision.

Anytime we have a question about municipal broadband in Philadelphia, we turn to the sage wisdom of broadband business strategist Craig Settles.

Settles is sourced often for national broadband issues and his analysis appears regularly in The New York Times, Wired and other technology publications. He’s written extensively about the federal broadband stimulus process and advises municipal governments on broadband programs as a consultant. But his value to us is his depth of experience with Philadelphia’s digital divide. It always keeps us coming back.

The once Southwest Philadelphia-native  – who attended St. Joe’s Prep – now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, but he has written extensively about Philadelphia broadband, including a book  – Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless – on the city’s failed Wireless Philadelphia initiative, well-known throughout the industry.

We turned to Settles this week for some answers on how the stimulus proposal review process is winding down and what he thinks are next steps for City of Philadelphia broadband.

As always, edited for length and clarity.

When is the federal broadband funding going to be distributed?
I’d expect it in the month of November. The pressure is still on to put it through, but it could be well into December.

We had agreed before that it seemed like the City of Philadelphia had done all the right things to create a strong application. Why do you think they weren’t recommended?

The wild card of this whole thing is the politics involved. What you have, starting in Congress and moving out is a bias toward rural areas. You can hear it in people’s comments, you can see it in how the rules are structured. If you’re in a poor area of Philadelphia, you are closer to a service provider than someone who is in some small township. The people that are reviewing proposals will reflect that bias, and I think that states, to a certain extent, will have a similar bias.

What about the Philly projects that were recommended, mostly pertaining to computer centers and broadband adoption programs?

If you follow what’s going in Washington, there is an ‘out’ card with computer centers and broadband adoption programs. Those were bones that were thrown to urban areas.
The problem is that that segment is the smallest amount of money available. If you look at the big picture, you have 2,200 people applying for all of the money, and you have a greater number of people applying proportionally for computer centers and broadband adoption than you do for the other proposals. So in that environment, you’re working with the unspoken political undercurrent.

Without the state’s recommendations, what can the city do now?

If you do sufficient planning and needs assessment and figure out the financial aspect of how the network is going to pay for itself, if you have done that part well and it’s a strong enough proposal, then I say take the proposal and go find other funding sources and partners and try to make the thing work.

Take the Gates Foundation anchor institution approach, you rope in [institutions] into the same network structure you’re trying to build. [City CTO Allan Frank] wanted to do that from the beginning. He was talking to these different entities to find their needs, and I’m assuming to find out what they had, as well. Fall back on that and modify it. Say ‘we won’t get government money, but we can get a 2-, 3-, 4-year commitment from various institutions and city government makes a commitment to them,’ and there’s a way to make this work.

It will take longer and will be assembled in a piecemeal fashion – and you’ll have more political battles – but in the end, the city gets what it wants and what the city needs.

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings you an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia’s technology community. See others here.