RUS Loans are Still Draconian. Only 1/3 of the funding will be outright grants, with the other 2/3 being outright loans or 50/50 loans and grants. This means that most of funding can only go to those who are already RUS borrowers or who are willing and able to accept the draconian RUS loan provisions.
Anybody accepting an RUS loan must pledge 100% of their existing assets to the RUS and also give the RUS an exclusive first lien position on the company. What this means is that anybody that already has a loan elsewhere is not going to be able to take these loans. Existing lenders like CFC. CoBank, or any commercial bank will not accept a second loan position to these new awards. A huge number of telcos and electric cooperatives that borrow elsewhere won’t be able to accept RUS loans, eliminating them from consideration for anything but the 100% grant portion of the program.
These same loan restrictions also make it unlikely that any government entity can accept an award that includes am RUS loan. I’ve worked with nearly a dozen government entities that have pursued RUS loans and none of them have successfully been able to overcome the pledge and other lending hurdles.
The 10% Test. The program has a gotcha slipped in by Congress that no more than 10% of the locations covered by the program can already have existing broadband 10/1 Mbps or greater speeds. This is a giant change from past RUS award programs that allowed up to 85% to have 10/1 speeds. Applicants need to take this requirement seriously and I expect any applications that can’t the lack of existing broadband will be quickly tossed out of consideration. This is not a flexible rule and was inserted into the grant rules by big telco lobbyists who don’t want to see any competition.
This means that any parts of the country previously covered by any federal funding program that required 10/1 Mbps speeds will not be eligible – including past award areas that haven’t yet been upgraded, like the areas recently awarded under the CAF II reverse auction. Applicants are going to have to be extremely careful in defining study areas, almost on a home by home basis. I fully expect RUS to test the study areas hard and I’m positive that outside parties (like incumbent telcos) will be able to intervene if they think an applicant fails this test.
The worst part of this is that we know that the rural broadband maps suck and that there are many places that the FCC considers to have 10/1 broadband that doesn’t have it. Applicants will have a big uphill battle to get funding in these areas.
Requires Two Years of Sound Audits. Applicants need to produce two years of audited solid historical financial performance – meaning start-ups need not bother with the grants. The RUS hasn’t forgotten the big problems they had with start-up companies during the stimulus grant program.
Environmental Impacts. Applicants must analyze the environmental and national historic preservation impacts of a grant request. It’s possible to get out of this requirement if a state official will declare that these tests aren’t required for applicants from their state. Applicants are also going to need affidavits from a state official to describe state broadband grant programs and to describe any conflicts with a grant filing.
Record Keeping. In order to meet the 10% rule I expect study areas to be disjointed –pocket of homes here and there scattered over a larger area. Applicants will somehow have to track costs of construction in these small pockets and not mingle costs with other nearby areas that were not included in a grant supplication. It’s going to be hard to show an audit trail of invoices that are just for the study area.
Prevailing Wage. The announcement doesn’t mention prevailing wage, but I expect this to apply. In past RUS grants this requirement has been included in the detailed descriptions of the grant process that hasn’t yet been released. Prevailing wage means paying construction labor at rates determine by each state, and which in many states reflect the cost of building in the largest cities and not in the rural areas. Prevailing wages can sometimes be so much higher than actual construction company rates that the difference in the wages can wipe out most of the benefit if getting a 50% grant.
Matching Funds Spent First. The grants require that matching funds must be 100% spent before any RUS money. That means the funding sources that incur the highest interest rates must be spent first, adding to the cost of the project. The source of the matching funds needs to be identified by the time of the grant filings.
I’m positive that many will be excited about a new large broadband grant program, but the above grant requirements are going to scare off or disqualify many potential applicants. These hurdles are not by accident – the big telcos really don’t want anybody competing against them and have stacked the deck with the nuances of the rules.