Depart. Of Commerce Grants for braodband

[phanio]

I just found out about these loan and grant opportunities when Broadbad USA launched it's Broadband Match portal.

Not a bad way to go if you are in this space and looking to extend your reach or if you live in a rural area and need access to broadband.

The portal allows individuals and groups to partner and apply for grants for these projects - check it out: Broadband Match Home (http://match.broadbandusa.gov/BTOPpartners/BPMhome.aspx)

Apparently they are not getting enough applications for the $7.2 billion in grant funds from the Recovery Act.

For individuals, businesses (for-profit) and non-profits.

[vangogh]

Thanks for the info. Looks like something that could be useful to some of us.

[KristineS]

I knew nothing about this. I'll have to check it out. There are some rural areas in Michigan that might find this useful.

[billbenson]

Rural Broadband has been around for 10 years or more. An ISP puts up a tower and tries to sell you the service. It's really no different than home network wifi. It's a line of sight technology. Yes it goes through some walls in your house, but anything and everything affects the signals. Omnidirectional antennas (the stick looking antennas) radiate and receive on a horizontal plane (if pointing up). They don't do well up and down, so a room below the router with a omni antenna usually has pretty poor reception.

There are also directional antennas. Yagi, parabolic, flat panel antennas for indoor or outdoor use. These all have much higher gain, but in only one direction.

There are also amplifiers but the fcc limits how much power you can use. 250 mw I think, but I don't remember for sure.

So if an ISP in your area offers broadband connections to your house or you are trying to set up something it may be worth investigating. Remember, though, distances are limited and if you don't have clear line of sight to the tower it probably won't work. I've seen one tree in a corn field take a signal out. Also, lower frequency's will go further, but will have less bandwidth.

I used to sell this stuff. The above should be pretty accurate, but technologies have changed since I did that.

[Harold Mansfield]

It would seem that the new WIMAX technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX) would be perfect for that kind of use. As far as I know I have only seen one company offering it and in limited areas, Clear. (http://www.clear.com/).
Apparently the reach of a WIMAX tower is twice that or better that the frequency towers that we all bounce off of now and they are boasting 4G connections.