Of the $404 million in Round 2 broadband stimulus funds handed out by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) last week, fiber operators scored a significant share, perhaps more so than in the first stage.
That shows the government recognizes fiber, the most future-proof transport method available, as the technology that will make the most of the scant billions allotted by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for broadband upgrades in the United States.
A little less than two dozen fiber-oriented companies, utilities and cooperatives snagged some of the capital announced July 2 – rapidly growing Zayo Bandwidth among them. Twenty-nine entities in all received grant dollars.
Zayo Bandwidth, the Colorado-based division of Zayo Group, won $13.4 million to build almost 300 miles of new fiber network in Minnesota. Anoka County, one of the regions that will benefit the most, will add $5.7 million of its own money for the efforts. Then, Zayo Bandwidth will connect 145 institutions such as health care facilities and sell wholesale high-speed broadband access to ISPs in what the feds called “economically distressed counties” north of the Twin Cities.
“We feel pretty fortunate and pretty excited,” said John Scarano, president of Zayo Bandwidth and COO of Zayo Group, in an interview with VON/xchange.
In the meantime, Zayo Bandwidth is making strides on its Round 1 projects in Indiana. Late last year, the operator landed $25 million in grants to extend its fiber infrastructure to 80 rural communities.
Scarano said Zayo Bandwidth came out ahead in both rounds because it submitted narrow applications to the NTIA, the agency tasked with assigning broadband stimulus grants, that focused just on “areas where we could provide a very helpful hand.” The hard part, Scarano added, was that, “because Zayo’s networks…happen to be adjacent to so many rural areas, it was actually fairly hard to cull down the list and figure out who had the greatest need, where we could help the most.”
Fiber firms including Northern Arkansas Telephone, Wilkes Telephone & Electric Co., Iowa Health System and Massachusetts Technology Park also snagged NTIA grants last week.
The $404 million was part of the $7.2 billion available to NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) as part of the ARRA. RUS awarded $390.9 million to 37 recipients on July 2. The ARRA package was meant to create jobs and help bring the United States out of one of the worst economic declines in history. Federal officials said the latest broadband funding round will create or save 5,000 jobs. Zayo Bandwidth said it expects to preserve or add 100 jobs with the latest stimulus money.
Plus, said Scarano, the grants will “go a long way to enabling, literally, distance learning in earnest, distance medicine in earnest. Those sorts of things really improve quality of life, in my own judgment, in a way that we genuinely enjoy being a part of.”
The federal government has more subsidies to distribute and says it will do so by Sept. 30.
