An ounce of Sense

These guys have no Business sense:

The Obama administration made it a national priority to spread high-speed Internet access to every American home and it offered stimulus money to help companies pay for it, but the biggest network operators are staying away from the program.

With today the deadline to apply for $4.7 billion in broadband grants, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast won't be going for the stimulus money, sources close to the companies said.Their reasons are varied. All three say they have enough cash to upgrade and expand their broadband networks on their own. Some say the grant money could draw unwanted scrutiny of their business practices and compensation programs, as seen with automakers and banks that got government bailouts.

And privately, some complain about the conditions attached to the money, including a net-neutrality rule they say would prevent them from managing traffic on their networks in the way they want."We are concerned that some new mandates seem to go well beyond current laws and FCC rules, and may lead to the kind of continuing uncertainty and delay that is antithetical to the president's primary goals of economic stimulus and job creation," said Walter McCormick, president of USTelecom, a trade group that represents companies including AT&T and Verizon.

The stimulus bill could have been something helpful for the economy had it been structured more appropriately; meaning, had it actually been money spent in places and ways that would actually stimulate something in a timely fashion. But as Keith Hennessy pointed out a couple weeks back, that hasn't been the case.

FUBAR from Day One.