DLA Piper lawyers are working to help their clients get a piece of the $7.2 billion in stimulus money targeted, in part, at efforts to increase broadband Internet access in rural areas.
The stimulus money is intended to bring high-speed Internet connections—via cable, DSL or satellite, as opposed to slower dial-up access—to areas of the country now served by, for example, just one provider or none at all.
Partner Joseph Silver said the firm has about a dozen clients in different states who are seeking funding from the Recovery Act program, as well as necessary matching funds from private
investors. Six Atlanta attorneys have worked on these funding requests, as well as other lawyers from the firm’s offices around the country.
“The firm has basically created a collaborative effort among our venture capital team, our telecommunications practice and our government affairs practice to identify clients and help them with their applications to various agencies … and to help them identify private sources of funding,” he said.
As the government programs are constructed, businesses seeking funding must get 80 percent of their money either from the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications Information Administration, which is tasked with distributed $4.7 billion for broadband initiatives, or from the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utility Service, which will distribute $2.5 billion targeted specifically at rural broadband access. Businesses must then raise 20 percent of their funding from private sources, Silver said.
Funds must be distributed before Sept. 30, 2010, and used for projects that can be completed in two years.
Silver said clients don’t want their identities revealed at this point, but he added that the client list includes technology companies, emerging growth companies, companies backed by mezzanine lenders and businesses associated with state governments. The types of businesses include wireline and wireless providers and providers offering to construct a variety of facilites, including those that offer last-mile facilities, which connect the end-user to the Internet; middle-mile facilities, which offer the infrastructure needed to connect, among other things, data centers to one another; and long-haul facilities, which may provide long-distance fiber routes between, for example, Atlanta and Miami.
Silver said DLA lawyers have helped clients by working on executive summaries and business plans to attract private investors, handling all financing documentation, contracts and associated lobbying, and by helping with the government application process.
All application materials for funds targeted at unserved and underserved areas were due to the government on Aug. 20—a deadline extended from Aug. 14 because the response from interested companies was so great that it caused the government’s Web site, www.broadbandusa.gov, to crash, Silver said. All of DLA’s clients, he said, were applying for this type of funding.
“Hopefully we’re going to be certain to hear something in early November,” he said. “I think when people get news of positive responses and awards it may spur additional applications. … I think it’s going to lead to more work going forward as it becomes more public.”