The U.S. Treasury has approved the state of California’s plan to use its entire $540.2 million Capital Projects Fund budget for broadband.
The Capital Projects Fund, which was created in the American Rescue Plan Act, has a budget of $10 billion to be allocated among the states. The states are allowed to use the funding for a variety of infrastructure projects, including broadband.
To date, Treasury has approved funding for 39 states in the program. Most of the states are using only a portion of their CPF money for broadband, but at least one other state – South Carolina – expects to use its entire CPF allocation for broadband.
California Capital Projects Fund Plans
The CPF money that California is receiving will go into a newly established Last Mile Broadband Expansion grant program. The funding is expected to go toward making broadband available to 127,000 homes and businesses.
That represents approximately 16% of locations in the state that do not have high-speed internet access available to them, according to a fact sheet. The program targets locations that do not have reliable broadband available to them at speeds of 25/3 Mbps or higher.
Providers receiving funding are required to deploy infrastructure capable of supporting speeds of at least 100 Mbps symmetrically.
According to a U.S. Treasury press release, $5.9 billion in Capital Projects Fund has been directed toward broadband deployments to date. Those deployments are expected to reach 1.75 million locations.
