Today, the Senate passed its version of the Stimulus Bill, joining its compatriots in the House in approving a $800-odd billion dollar plan to improve our nation’s economic outlook.  What does this mean for the techies?  As you may remember, the House version of the bill (which has already passed) conditioned grant money on the “open” nature of the networks receiving the money.  Where do we go from here?

Both bills are slightly different and will need to be reconciled in a House-Senate conference.   For example, the Senate version of the bill contains even more funding for broadband, $9 billion to the House’s $6 billion, although both still fall short of what public interest groups have been asking for.  Free Press, for example, recommended a $44 billion dollar investment in broadband deployment.

Notably, the Senate version of the bill does not require the FCC to define what “open access” means , and does not require the parties who receive the grants to be “open access” providers.  Depending on what comes out of the conference, we may or may not have network neutrality provisions attached to the funding.  More importantly, we might not have a hammered-down definition of what “open access” means.

The two bills differ in broadband speed definitoins as well.  The House version distinguishes between advanced broadband and advanced wireless broadband, tagging up/down speeds for the former at 45/15mbps  and the latter at 3/1mbps.  The Senate version distinguishes between next-gen and current-gen. Up/down for the former is 100/20mbps, and for the latter it is at least 5/1mbps for wired, 3mbps/768kbps for wireless.  If the Senate definitions win out, within a few years we could see speeds approach one tenth of those planned in South Korea.

Let the negotiations begin…