Electric cooperative gigabit is becoming more commonplace, as news today about four electric cooperative gigabit deployments illustrates. The four cooperatives include two Tennessee companies (Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative and Meriwether Lewis Electric Cooperative), along with two Alabama cooperatives (North Alabama…
Individual service providers will be able to apply for loans, grants or a combination of the two in the upcoming $600 million USDA rural broadband pilot program, said a senior USDA official late last week. Traditionally, USDA has administered separate…
The latest round of USDA rural broadband funding was announced yesterday, with $97 million allocated for projects in 11 states. The funding is a mix of loans and grants, flowing from the USDA Rural Development Telecommunications Loans and Community Grants…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is seeking stakeholder input on how to implement the $600 million E-Connectivity broadband loan and grant pilot authorized in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018. The USDA E-Connectivity pilot will target rural areas with populations…
The cost to deploy fiber to unserved U.S. rural areas is about $61 billion, said Jim Stegeman, president of CostQuest Associates, an economic consultancy that specializes in telecom. Among CostQuest’s credentials: the company created the cost model used to determine…
The Senate yesterday passed its version of a 2018 Farm Bill that would put new limits on broadband loans made through the USDA Rural Utilities service. The Senate Farm Bill RUS broadband loan limitations pertain to the percentage of a…
Several groups representing broadband providers co-signed a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee asking them to change RUS broadband loan rules to focus funding on areas where either all, or at least 90%, of…
When it comes to federal rural broadband funding, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly wants to make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. Now that Congress has allocated $600 million in new funding to the Rural Utilities…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service has begun accepting RUS broadband loan applications for fiscal year 2018. For years, the program has provided low-interest loans for broadband network construction and is currently operating based on parameters established in…
New rural broadband funding is included in the $1.3 trillion congressional omnibus bill to fund the government this year. The bill calls for an additional $600 million to be distributed through the Rural Utilities Service (RUS). The funding authorizes the…
U.S. Department of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said today that President Trump plans to appoint Kenneth Johnson, CEO of rural Missouri-based Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, to be the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service Administrator. Co-Mo has offered broadband to its members over fiber-to-the-home…
Telecom and electric cooperatives are playing an important role in bringing high-speed broadband to rural America, according to a new report from the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). Using FCC data, researchers identified 87…
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