Feels like Friday was a month ago! The sun shone at least half the weekend. It’s a new day but we have some familiar battles.

• Some good news – broadband is back in the House budget. (Rural objections are credited with sway.)
• Some bad news – it’s only $8 million.
• Some detail – There are some changes to define unserved based on the FCC definition (25 Mbps for downloads and 3 Mbps for uploads) and economic growth a priority objective.

Now it’s time to look at the Senate. They have budgeted $17 million for the broadband fund and $250,000 (annual) for the Office of Broadband Development. (Just for comparison the Governor has said $30 million for the fund.) You can see more detail online.

They will go through a similar process as the House working out what proposal they want to bring to the table with the House. As I said last week, it’s good that the House has broadband in the budget, makes for easier negotiation that something that has been entirely removed. It would be nice to see the Senate start out higher than budget number. Letters to policymakers would help.

Some folks have been good enough to share their letters to policymakers with me. I will try to share them this week. (Feel free to send me any letter you’d like me to post.)