Frontier CAF broadband investments are helping the broadband carrier reach 275,000 households across California. The FCC’s Connect America Fund (CAF) is directly responsible for reaching 40K homes, and indirectly responsible for many more.
According to Frontier, the more than 39,000 CAF-designated locations exceeds their agreed upon CAF milestone for 2017. Frontier commitments for California CAF funded locations – which get service of at least 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream – included reaching 40% of 90,000 CAF deployments by 2017. The CAF program is providing Frontier with $38 million for each of six years to fund broadband build outs to rural located homes.
CAF investments also help bring broadband to other nearby locations, some of which have capabilities of up to 115 Mbps download speeds.
Joe Gamble, the senior vice president of operations for Frontier’s western region, said that the carrier’s CAF participation is bringing $228 million in federal funds to California. This, he said in a press release, is important to the Golden State. “High-speed connectivity has become a necessity required to enable Californians to fully participate in today’s digital economy.”
Beyond CAF investments, Frontier is using private investments and grants from the California Advanced Services Fund, to expand services across the state. An additional 100,000 households were targeted for the end of last year with 25 Mbps capabilities.
Overall, Frontier reports this network build out activity will bring broadband to over 275K locations. California counties impacted by this expansion include: Colusa; Fresno; Imperial; Inyo; Kern; Kings; Los Angeles; Mono; Monterey; Riverside; San Bernardino; San Joaquin; Santa Clara; Tulare; and Ventura.
Last month, Frontier reported that it had exceeded 2017 milestones in Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin as well.
