UPDATE- More information about NTIA awards added to the end of this post.
There were no standouts among the 43 new broadband stimulus awards totaling $518 million announced by the Rural Utilities Service today. The largest award–$66.4 million to Lake County, Minn. for a fiber-to-the-premises network—was considerably smaller than some other awards made in recent weeks, which in several cases have exceeded $100 million.
One newcomer to the winner list was DigitalBridge Communications, which won $800,000 for a WiMAX network in Indiana. DigitalBridge applied for funding for a total of 30 projects in this funding round, of which 29 are still pending. The company also would benefit if the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative were to win funding for any of the 30 projects it submitted in the second round because those projects also would rely on the DigitalBridge network, in which the NRTC is a part owner. The NRTC, however, has not yet won funding for any of those projects.
Another company winning for the first time in this funding round is KeyOn Communications, which was awarded $10.1 million for a WiMAX network in Nevada. The company is still waiting to hear on 15 additional applications, totaling about $365 million, that it made in this round.
Also still pending is a single application from Qwest Communications for $348 million throughout its 14-state territory.
Windstream Communications, which previously won funding for 12 of the 30 projects it submitted in this round, added three more projects to its winnings. The company’s total winnings in this announcement were about $26 million, for projects in New Mexico, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
In announcing the new winners today, the Rural Utilities Service was just one day late in meeting its target date for announcing $450 million in stimulus awards. The National Telecommunications and Information Agency, which was scheduled to announce awards totaling between $600 and $900 million last week, did not meet its target date either. A single announcement for a computer center and a community anchor network award for the University of Hawaii totaling $26 million came out Friday.
But although there have been no formal announcements from the NTIA, a few members of congress and governors around the country made a few announcements this morning. According to press reports, a $100 million grant was made to the EAGLE-NET intergovernmental consortium and a $93.9 million award went to the state of Connecticut’s Information Technology Department—both for middle mile networks.
A complete list of today’s RUS winners can be found here.
UPDATE: Shortly after this story was filed late Monday, the NTIA released a list of 35 new awards totaling $482 million.
The majority of NTIA awards (25) were for computing centers and sustainable broadband adoption—although the majority of funds went to 10 infrastructure awards valued at a combined $360.5 million. All NTIA infrastructure awards were for community anchor, or middle mile, projects. Two of those awards–$100.6 million to Colorado’s Centennial Board of Cooperative Educational Services and $93.9 million to the Connecticut Department of Information Technology–were quite large.
The list did not include the $100 million grant that the NTIA reportedly made to the EAGLE-NET intergovernmental consortium.
The NTIA release, include the complete list of winners can be found here.
