Late last month, the House Small Business Committee held yet another oversight hearing involving the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), this time focusing on the investments called for in the bill into nationwide broadband deployment. Broadband deployment is particularly important for microbusinesses, which tend to be heavily reliant on a variety of Internet-based technologies as cost savers or as a substitute for staff. Besides all that, broadband deployment presents great opportunities for small and mid-sized operators — particularly since, evidently, larger carriers such as Verizon and Comcast have decided not to compete for the grants and loans available through ARRA.

It soon became clear under questioning from various members of the Committee that there were any number of administrative issues with the grant and loan applications that needed to be worked out. Both Administration witnesses indicated that their respective agencies planned to solicited feedback from applicants in order to make improvements to the next round of applications. Given the scope of the problems uncovered in this hearing and the optimistic but rather unrealistic time-line put forward by both Mr. Strickling and Mr. Adelstein, no doubt the Committee will revisit the ARRA broadband deployment initiative again. It is fairly important for everybody involved to get this one right. If they get it working, the program presents one of the best opportunities for small and microbusinesses yet to emerge from the Obama Administration.