Already, stimulus funds created 640,000 new jobs that would not have existed but for the recovery bill.

According to Brian David, director-adoption and usage for the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative, the broadband plan may end up establishing goals for broadband adoption rates in the U.S. to rise to the “high 70s” in percentage terms by 2015, with a longer-term target of 88% to 90%. By comparison, he noted that adoption rates in the U.S. of basic home telephone services never got much beyond 95%.

Much of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s funding is largely targeted at rural, relatively high-cost markets. Internet regulations of this sort may reduce the effectiveness of such funds by raising the cost of network deployment and management.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration has awarded $1.9 million for broadband mapping and planning to Alabama. $1.4 million, will be used for mapping and data collection. The rest will be used for planning during a two-year period.

The [Wisconsin] Public Service Commission will receive a $1.7 million grant to create a map of Wisconsin’s broadband Internet services and to plan more.

Oniva Inc. estimates that the direct stimulus spending has created just under 8,000 tech and telecom jobs, but this is a calculation based on a White House formula that says for approximately every $92,000 in recovery dollars spent, one job is created or saved, said Michael Balsam, the chief solutions officer of Oniva. Oniva tracks government contract spending and has set up a separate site, Recovery.org, to look at stimulus spending specifically and has tallied the amount of technology spending.

$7.2 billion is not enough to provide robust broadband connectivity to all unserved or underserved homes, businesses, and institutions.

The DOE last month received roughly 570 applications from utilities requesting as much as $14.6 billion in smart-grid funds—more than three times the amount available.

$4.5 billion in federal stimulus funds are allocated for smart-grid projects.

New York State had 140 broadband stimulus projects seeking more than $1 billion (only California asked for more).