What Strickling thinks makes a winning application

Excerpted from today’s TR Daily

STRICKLING CALLS FOR ‘MORE CREATIVE, INCLUSIVE’APPLICATIONS IN SECOND BTOP FUNDING ROUND

In round two of funding for the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration wants to “push people to be more creative and more inclusive” through public/private partnerships that “reach out to all the key anchors in a community,” not just libraries and schools, NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling said yesterday during a luncheon speech at the Practising Law Institute’s telecom policy and regulation conference in Washington.

“We think project applicants can do more to include the companies that will offer services to households and businesses in the project,” Mr. Strickling added…

In the first round of BTOP applications, which are still under review, “the highest quality applications are the ones that have taken a truly comprehensive view of the communities to be served and have engaged as many key members of the communities as possible in developing the projects,” Mr. Strickling said. “We want to see more of these projects in round 2 and for those of you in the audience that have worked on applications, I challenge you to respond to this message and work all that much harder to bring us applications that will serve communities for years to come….”

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As I think was alluded to before by watchers of this proceeding, private companies are hard pressed to win without having bonafide relationships and endorsements from the governments in the communities they propose to serve.

I suppose the part of the NOFA, application and discourse from administrators discouraging applicants from going into a community without making advance effort to assess the needs of its inhabitants and get to know them better is playing itself out in these statements.

Or am I reading too much into the speech?

Take note folks!