Yesterday we noted that just $6 billion of the $825 billion Obama infrastructure investment plan would be spent on broadband, though the plan was rather vague. Today additional specifics have emerged, with the full text (pdf) of the infrastructure bill posted to the House website. According to the bill (pages 38-58 address broadband), both the Rural Utility Service (run by the USDA) and the NTIA will be dealing out the funds - - both agencies getting $2.8 billion for grants and loans for under-served areas.

We need to define what broadband is before we move forward, with carriers and consumers advocates obviously having different definitions. The bill goes some way towards that, the NTIA portion of the money is tied to benchmarks that define 45Mbps/5Mbps as "advanced broadband," while 5Mbps/1Mbps service is defined as "basic broadband." The RUS money is not tied to benchmarks.

$350 million of the $6 billion dollars is also to be spent on mapping broadband, the same amount spent last year after the FCC finally agreed their broadband mapping and 200kbps definitions needed updating. The mapping portion seems so far underfunded, given you can't adequately address what problems you're fixing if you don't understand the battlefield to begin with. Still, as we noted yesterday, Blair Levin has insisted this is just the first round of the Obama broadband plan.

It's been made clear that new FCC boss Julius Genachowski is a fan of network neutrality, and the bill ties the money to the RUS and NTIA to vague "open access" conditions – the term to be defined by the FCC within 45 days of passage. All things considered, none of this represents a major shift from what we're doing now, though it's a big enough of a shift (particularly the network neutrality conditions) that you'll probably see carriers fight the plan.

Our guess? Both the open access provisions, and the minimum speed requirements will be stripped from the bill because of lobbyist pressure. That brings us back, once again, to why exactly most broadband reform plans fail.