Rural broadband access is just half the battle -- maybe less than half, says Frank Odasz. Broadband doesn't produce jobs, people do, and they need training in best practices and entrepreneurship and trusted networks of support.

A bipartisan group of Senators have cut $90 billion from the stimulus plan, including $1.5 billion for the extension of internet broadband into rural areas. The group is led by Senators Ben Nelson (Democrat of Nebraska) and Susan Collins (Republican of Maine, above).

According to the New York Times, the two "spent much of the day "scrutinizing the 736-page bill and wrangling over what to remove." The Times reported late Thursday night that "the group had drafted a list of nearly $90 billion in cuts, including $40 billion in aid for states, $4.1 billion to make federal buildings energy efficient and $1.5 billion for broadband Internet service in rural areas. But they remained short of a deal, and talks were expected to go all night."

The Senate had included $9 billion for broadband extension in the original bill. The House had $6 billion.

Criticism of plans to spend billions of dollars on extending broadband Internet service to rural communities is growing louder. The questions largely came from Republicans, who said spending money on rural broadband would not create many new jobs. On the Hannity show last night on Fox News, Sen. John McCain of Arizona specifically mentioned the rural broadband proposal when asked what he didn't like in the Senate stimulus bill.

"There is no end to the spending," said the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. "Many of the projects will take such access to broadband and wireless for rural America that will take years, just years. Much of the spending can't be done in a short time, and it is spending programs that the Democrats have tried to put into law and enact for a long time, and now, they are doing that."

Today's Investor's Business Daily singled out the broadband provision as part of a "laundry list of provisions that critics say have little relation to economic stimulus." Last night on CNN's Lou Dobbs show, industry analysts said the rural broadband proposal would have little stimulative effect. "The number of jobs that broadband stimulus is meant to create is highly debatable," one analyst said.

In a front page (and above the fold) story in today’s New York Times, reporter David Herszenhorn asks if the “billions pegged to expand broadband Internet service to rural and underserved areas” will create jobs, expand services and help businesses or “become a $9 billion cyberbridge to nowhere, representing the worst kind of mistakes that lawmakers could make in rushing to approve one of the largest spending bills in history without considering unintended results.”

“The first rule of technology investment is you spend time understanding the end user, what they need and the conditions under which they will use the technology,” said Craig Settles, an industry analyst and consultant who has studied broadband applications in rural and urban areas. “If you don’t do this well, you end up throwing millions or, in this case, potentially billions down a rat hole. You will spend money for things that people don’t need or can’t use.” This argument mirrors a discussion taking place in Great Britain, where an expansion of broadband into rural areas is being questioned. The reporter does find, however, that the “the potential benefits of wider network access are indisputable,” but that it will take years to complete the work, negating any immediate stimulative effect.

The bill does leave open lots of questions. Who will benefit from its tax provisions? How will this work fit in with plans to build a “next generation” (i.e., much faster) Internet? “We can’t sit around waiting for the perfect in technology when we have the good before us,” Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska said.