A Rocky Start for Obama's Broadband Push - BusinessWeek

A Rocky Start for Obama's Broadband Push - BusinessWeek:

"No Hard Answers

And so it went again and again. At the first public discussion of the Obama Administration's much heralded broadband plan, government officials offered virtually no hard answers to the hundreds of people who gathered in person and the 2,500 more who participated via live Web video. For almost every substantive question about how the billions will be allocated, officials said they're looking for guidance from the public. Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, NTIA associate administrator, said the government is seeking input on 'nearly every facet of the program.'

The lack of answers proved frustrating for some participants. Charlie Mattingly, chief executive of a small Internet service provider in Texas called Broadband Rural, was taken aback that the meeting wasn't more productive. 'I had no idea how full of themselves they are in Washington,' he said. 'If we had half the money that the government spent to put on this meeting today and half of the money that people spent to attend it, we could have put 1,000 people online,' he said."