Though new rules give the NTIA ‘additional flexibility’ to distri...
Though new rules give the NTIA “additional flexibility” to distribute DTV coupons other than through the mail, it’s doubtful those distribution methods will include sending coupons electronically, agency officials told a media briefing Tuesday. The rules changes give the…
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NTIA the freedom, for example, to give away coupons to residents of single-room-occupancy buildings, said Bernadette McGuire- Rivera, associate administrator of the NTIA’s Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications. The NTIA is “putting our focus on the unready households,” which Nielsen says now number about 4 million (CD March 23 p13), McGuire- Rivera said. “We also know from the Nielsen data that these groups are not big Internet users,” she said. “I know that there are a lot of people who are very interested in having a, quote, downloadable coupon that someone could go to their computer and get that coupon. Based on our research so far, that doesn’t seem like a mechanism that would be widely used by these groups, so that might not justify whatever cost it would be to set that up.” The NTIA spent just over $190 million of the $490 million allocated for new DTV coupons in the economic stimulus package to clear its backlog of coupon requests and began processing the last orders from its waiting list last Saturday, Gomez said.