A Rocky Start for Obama's Broadband Push

On March 10, Dan Spatz joined hundreds of other people who crammed into a 500-seat auditorium at the Commerce Dept. building in Washington, D.C. The crowd of executives, entrepreneurs, and local officials had gathered for the first public hearing about how the federal government plans to distribute $7.2 billion in grants and loans to improve broadband Internet access in the U.S.

Spatz, a city official from The Dalles, Ore., took the microphone to ask a relatively simple question: How would the government determine which regions in the country are “unserved,” a critical definition because those areas without broadband service are supposed to take priority under the legislation passed by Congress.

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