The federal government is making headway with the broadband stimulus as it nears the Sept. 30 deadline for distributing all $7.2 billion in grant and loan money.
Last week, the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) announced it’s funding 126 new projects, for a total of $1.2 billion. The awards include fiber, DSL and WiMAX deployments. The subsidies will be matched by $117 million in private investment.
Perhaps most notably, rural carrier Windstream Corp. landed $66.4 million, mostly in grants, to blanket seven states with broadband projects. Florida will benefit perhaps the most. That’s the state where Windstream will spend $38 million in government funds plus $12.7 million of its own money to bring broadband to unserved areas. Windstream says it will reach 36,000 homes and 4,400 businesses “that otherwise may never enjoy … broadband."
In all, the RUS has put more than $2.6 billion toward broadband projects thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The RUS’s counterpart, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a branch of the Commerce Department, has been busy handing out similar awards. The ARRA set aside $7.2 billion in all for the RUS and NTIA to use for broadband deployments.
