FCC Expands Eligibility for Rural Health Care Pilot Program
From a news release dated February 7, 2007
FCC EXPANDS ELIGIBILITY TO INCLUDE NATIONALLAMBDARAIL’SBACKBONE IN RURAL HEALTH CARE PILOT
Washington, DC
– The Federal Communications Commissiontoday expanded eligibility in its new rural health care pilot program toinclude connections to National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR), in addition toInternet2. NLR is a non-profit backboneprovider that, like Internet2, serves government research and academicinstitutions, as well as public and private health care institutions.
To giveapplicants sufficient time to consider this change, the Commission also extendedthe deadline for applications to the program by an additional 30 days. The newdeadline for submission of applications will be 60 days after the Commissionreceives approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of theinformation collection requirements of the program. The OMB is in the process of reviewing theserequirements. The FCC will issue aPublic Notice upon OMB approval, which will be posted at http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/rural/rhcp.html.
Launched by theCommission on September 26, 2006, the Rural Health Care Pilot Program initiallyspecified that applicants may seek funding for connections to Internet2, anon-profit dedicated nationwide backbone. In response to a petition filed by NLR, the Commission found severalpublic interest benefits in the participation of more than one backboneprovider, including, but not limited to, providing network redundancy, whichwill improve the health care community’s ability to respond in a nationalcrisis.
With today’sruling, program applicants seeking funding may pre-select either Internet2 orNLR, or seek competitive bids for nationwide backbone services from Internet2or NLR.
Congress in theTelecommunications Act of 1996 recognized the importance of providing advancedtelecommunications and information services to rural health care providers byauthorizing universal service fund support for rural telemedicineservices. The Rural Health Care PilotProgram is exploring ways to better use the fund for this purpose. For successful applicants, the pilot willfund up to 85 percent of the cost of deploying state or regional broadbandnetworks dedicated to health care, and up to 85 percent of the costs ofconnecting these networks to Internet2 or NLR. Funding for the program is capped at $100 million dollars, less what iscommitted in a particular funding year for the existing universal service ruralhealth care program.
See the original news release here.