WASHINGTON — A $7.2-billion provision in the economic stimulus bill to extend high-speed Internet service to the rural U.S. and other underserved areas has been hailed in Congress as the 21st century equivalent of government programs that brought electricity and modern highways to every corner of the country.
Others think the benefits may be overstated -- especially the notion that every dollar invested will produce a $10 boost to the economy.
But even as the larger questions were being debated, the Internet access provision was the subject of a furious lobbying campaign as interest groups, industries and individual companies sought to bend the details to their advantage.
In Congress, committee chairs fought turf battles for jurisdiction over the spending. And rural lawmakers squared off against their urban counterparts, quarreling over which Cabinet department should get control of the purse strings.
Such lobbying is business as usual in Washington, but the stakes were particularly high with the stimulus bill. It's the biggest spending bill in memory and is considered pivotal in reviving the moribund economy.
At one point, for instance, the technical details for some of the money were written in a way that would seem to benefit telecom giant Verizon Communications Inc.
That language was dropped in the push to cleanse the bill of controversial components. But insiders said some of the compromises forged by House and Senate negotiators could lead to problems in how the billions of dollars of new grants for broadband access are distributed.
For instance, the final bill divides the money -- and the power to dispense it -- between the Commerce Department and an Agriculture Department agency with a history of mismanagement of technology issues.
"The question is, why are we having two grant-making infrastructures developed for broadband grants, one of which is at the Department of Agriculture?" said Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a nonpartisan media reform group that focuses on technology issues.
The answer is an old story in Washington: A large pile of government money attracts a lot of attention.
The Internet access segment of the stimulus bill was designed broadly, with the goal of providing grants to applicants submitting proposals for improving the availability of high-speed service.
