The USDA has announced three more awards in the second round of its ReConnect Program. The awards, which total a bit more than $7 million, bring the announced investment during the week of October 11 to more than $173 million.
The latest batch includes USDA ReConnect Wyoming, Pennsylvania and South Dakota awards.
Union Telephone company got a $252,000 ReConnect grant to deploy a fixed wireless network to connect 106 people, seven businesses, a post office, a fire station and a farm in Carbon, Sweetwater and Fremont counties in Wyoming.
The Youngsville Television Corporation, doing business as Blue Fiber Corp., got a $750,000 loan to deploy a FTTP network to connect 685 people, 34 businesses, eight farms, two educational facilities, two town halls, a post office and a fire station in Crawford County, Pennsylvania.
SDN Communications got a $6 million grant to deploy a fixed-wireless network to connect 1,112 people, 16 businesses and three farms in Pennington and Lawrence counties in South Dakota.
These are not the first awards given to South Dakota and Wyoming in the second round. In 2019, a Wyoming company got a grant for $4.8 million and three companies in South Dakota – including SDN – got grants totaling about $20.1 million. This year, a USDA ReConnect Wyoming award was made in the form of a grant for $1.7 million, while South Dakota companies won $8.9 million. One of the South Dakota awards was a grant and two were in the form of grant/loan combinations.
The second round of the ReConnect Program is expected to make $550 million in awards. So far, it has invested $345,189,017 to 40 entities in 23 states and territories, according to the USDA.
The awards cap off a big week for the program. On October 14, the program invested $61 million in six projects in South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Nevada. Earlier in the week, the program announced investments of almost $105 million in Illinois, Colorado, Alaska, and Iowa.
