The NTIA is allocating $2.6 billion in funding during the next round, of which $2.35 billion will go to infrastructure projects, with a focus on what the NTIA calls “comprehensive community” proposals: “middle-mile broadband projects that connect key community anchor institutions – such as libraries, hospitals, community colleges, universities, and public safety institutions,” the NTIA said.

RUS, meanwhile, will distribute $2.2 billion, with a focus on last-mile projects. It will also add “support” for satellite-based proposals, but only in areas that are left unserved after other funds are awarded.

The separation of the two entities’ efforts is good in the sense that it may simplify and streamline the application and distribution process for the second round, industry consultant Craig Settles told Connected Planet. The two groups could then more closely follow the methods they’ve used historically rather than trying to reach agreement on common practices.

But it could pose dilemmas for stimulus hopefuls that have already applied. Those who haven’t heard a response yet from their first-round proposal will wonder if they should stick with that bet or apply anew in the second round with whichever of the two agencies they consider more likely to approve their request.

As with the first round, time is of the essence. All applications are due March 15. Winners will be announced by the end of September. And this is the last round of broadband stimulus funding.

A full description of the second-round funding process is here.

A schedule of free workshops on how to apply is here.

UPDATE: Here’s an analysis of the rules changes by consultant Craig Settles.

Here’s a condensed but still detailed summary of the new rules changes.

The 18 projects included in the winners being announced today will benefit 17 states and have already been matched by more than $46 million in private funding, the White House said.

UPDATE: The full list of recipients announced today is available here.

Though the administrators of the program promised to announce the first round of winners this month, the White House said today those announcements — pertaining to $2 billion in awards — will be spread out over the next 75 days. Of the $182 million in funds being announced today, $129 million will come from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and $54 million will come from the Rural Utilities Service.

The awards announced today include:

- A $33.5 million grant to the North Georgia Network Cooperative — a group of utility electricity providers — for a fiberoptic ring serving the northern Georgia foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The project will serve an eight-county area with a population of 334,000. It will be an “open” middle-mile network in which, according to the application, “Independent service providers will be encouraged, on a nondiscriminatory basis, to interconnect with the system in order to build out their own fiber services to end users.” NGNC and its partners pledged to match 20% of the project’s $41-million cost through “equity contributions.” The applicants expect the project to generate 837 jobs directly and almost 21,000 jobs indirectly.

- A $39.7-million grant for a wholesale middle-mile network in upstate New York proposed by a public/private partnership between ION — Independent Optical Network, a coalition of 13 rural telephone companies — and the Development Authority for the North Country (DANC). That network is expected to immediately connect more than 100 community institutions — including libraries, colleges and health clinics — and enable last-mile connections to 250,000 households and 38,000 businesses in New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

- A $25.4-million grant to the Biddeford Internet Corp., a partnership between the University of Maine and service providers, to build three fiberoptic rings across rural Maine. The network will pass through more than 100 communities with 110,000 households and will connect 10 University of Maine campuses.

- A $25.3-million grant, with $6.4 million of leveraged funds, for a multi-mode 4G wireless network spanning 90,000 square miles in southwestern Alaska, to be built by Rivada Sea Lion, an Alaska Native Corporation. The network (whose details were heavily redacted) will be used to provide broadband to 30,000 residents in 53 unserved communities.

-A combined grant/loan of $2.4 million to the Consolidated Electric Cooperative in north central Ohio to build a 166-mile fiber network that will connect 16 electrical substations to support a smart grid project and be sold to last-mile service providers.

- A $985,000 grant for a fiber-to-the-home project from New Hampshire’s Bretton Woods Telephone Company that will pass 386 households, 19 businesses and six community institutions.

- A $1.3-million grant, with $320,000 in matching funds, to provide computer centers for 84 libraries in Arizona.

- A $2.9-million grant, with $741,000 in matching funds, to “enhance broadband awareness and use” in four federally-designated poverty zones in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.

UPDATE: The full list of recipients announced today is available here.

Allied was created to operate wireless assets acquired by Atlantic that had been divested as part of Verizon Wireless’s acquisition of Alltel. Atlantic had previously hinted that it might choose Little Rock to set up its new base of operations, in part because hundreds of layoffs following Verizon’s acquisition have left a ready pool of available talent there.

In September, 13-year Alltel veteran Frank O’Mara was named to lead the acquired business, which includes 800,000 subscribers in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Illinois, Ohio and Idaho.

The company does ship high-volume manufacturing off-shore to contract manufacturing partners, but says managing first-runs and rush jobs locally — with its engineers and designers right in the next building — can actually save money when all costs are accounted for. Further, it gives the company insights into its own products that it claims competitors lack.

U.S-based manufacturing is so rare these days, we thought we would share a look.

Below: a few shots of the Adtran assembly line, where components are turned into boards and ultimately into systems ranging from routers and switches to telco access and transport platforms….

Up next: U.S. manufacturing jobs — live and in the flesh!

The FCC is considering handing over to the NTIA information in its 477 forms, which facilities-based service providers are required to submit twice a year. The forms detail each provider’s voice and broadband service subscribers and availability along with the maximum speeds of each service and other information. The FCC has historically allowed companies to request the information to be kept confidential but includes that information, aggregated anonymously, in published reports. NTIA, in its request for the data, said it would keep confidential information private, adhering if necessary to the same process the FCC uses in response to public requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The move comes as broadband providers are filing challenges en masse to applications for broadband stimulus funds. Incumbent providers typically object on the grounds that they themselves already offer broadband in the area proposed by the applicant. Federal administrators require those challengers to submit data proving their claims about existing service availability and have warned that they would require “overwhelming” evidence. Though challengers have already begun submitting their evidence, the use of 477 forms may provide federal administrators with more detailed data.

AT&T’s contract with workers in District 3, which includes nine Southeastern states, expired in August. And its contract in District 1, which includes Connecticut, expired in April. Together they represent just 30% of AT&T’s roughly 120,000 landline employees.

Agreements in those remaining regions don’t appear likely to be coming any time soon. Union officials in District 1 haven’t met with AT&T officials since October. And yesterday William Henderson, a union president there, called AT&T’s region-by-region approach a “divide and conquer” strategy, though the company pointed out that its existing labor contracts are divided into these regions.

The uptick in enterprise mobile data use isn’t occurring in spite of the economy; it is actually occurring because of it, according to practice director Dan Shey. He said that company consolidations have forced the remaining workforce to become more efficient and “mobile data services offer the most options for tailoring services to the needs and work practices of workers in order to increase productivity and business efficiency.”

For example, more business customers are using SMS messaging for communications, making messaging services the largest driver of data revenues on a global basis. Worldwide, messaging revenues stemming from the enterprise will grow 10% through 2014, totaling $48 billion. For North America in particular, mobile broadband revenues are outpacing other services to be the highest revenue drivers from 2010 to 2014. Eastern Europe and the Middle East, however, will continue to capture the greatest share of mobile broadband services revenues with revenues growing to 27% and 26%, respectively, by 2014. Amongst Asia Pacific mobile business customers, ABI found that application download revenues will see the greatest growth with customers in Asia Pacific and Western Europe accounting for the highest portion of ARPU spend on apps.

Windstream recently proposed raising $400 million in debt to fund two recent acquisitions, D&E Communications and Lexcom. And despite Windstream’s insistence that it doesn’t need to join in the large-scale M&A activity seen from peers like CenturyLink and Frontier, some analysts believe Windstream offered to acquire Frontier earlier this year, before that carrier bulked up with the purchase of Verizon assets.

Buying Fairpoint would push Windstream’s roughly 3 million access lines closer to 5 million, putting it more in league with CenturyLink and Frontier, which each have more than 7 million. But Windstream would have to untangle the same back-office messes that have brought Fairpoint to the brink of bankruptcy. And it would no doubt face heavy scrutiny from state regulators with little tolerance left for the negative effects of carrier M&A.

According to the Post, Windstream might also have to compete with private investors like John Paulson and Angelo Gordon, who have stocked up on a lot of Fairpoint’s bank debt.

Roberts’ total 2008 compensation of $40.8 million included a $2.7 million base salary and over $22 million in stock options, plus bonuses totalling nearly $8.3 million.

While the cable company’s stock has done well in the past 12 months, the Corporate Library said, it has lagged the industry in recent years and was down nearly 7% in 2008. Comcast, in its defense, pointed out that the company is facing unprecedented economic and competitive challenges these days.

No telecom industry CEOs made the top five, which may help the sector’s tarnished reputation in such matters. In the Library’s 2006 report, four out of 11 overpaid CEOs worked in the telecom industry; no other sector had nearly as much representation on the list.

Last week, AT&T and Cisco Systems joined a group of companies pledging to adopt compensation policies set forth by another research firm, the Conference Board, that are aimed at closer ties between pay and performance.