The USDA’s ReConnect program has awarded regional provider Uprise Fiber $27.1 million to build a 10 Gbps-capable FTTP network in Pershing County, Nevada.
Three-year-old Uprise Fiber is based in Reno, NV and provides service in Washington, Oregon and California in addition to Nevada. The company has committed $9 million in matching funds, which will bring the total investment in the network to $36.1 million.
The project, which is expected to take five years to complete, will focus on the city of Lovelock and surrounding areas that have current average data speeds of 6.7 Mbps. Residential service will be $30 per month for a symmetrical 200 Mbps connection and $50 for a symmetrical 1 Gbps connection. There will be no data caps or bandwidth throttling.
The grant and company contribution will fund fiber construction, improvement and acquisition of facilities and network equipment to provide fiber broadband to every home, business, and government facility in the most populated area of Pershing County, the press release says.
The company participates in the Affordable Connectivity Program which provides a $30 stipend to eligible households. The amount is $75 on Tribal Lands.
“Without the financial backing of programs like ReConnect and the IIJA, extensive fiber builds in rural communities like Lovelock are often financially prohibitive for private Internet Providers to construct,” Uprise Fiber CEO Sam Sanders said in a press release.
“Our plan is to leverage this valuable support not only to deliver world-class fiber service to Pershing County but to also maximize the impact this investment will make in this community by uniting business leaders and community stakeholders in an alliance that will create as many positive economic and social benefits as possible. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but ultimately our hope is that this project will serve as an example of what a transformative private-public partnership can look like.”
Government sponsored funding programs are driving massive expansion in fiber network construction, with even more funding yet to come.
