Windstream has completed the first phase of deployment in Green County, KY under the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) by bringing access to 109 locations in the city of Greensburg.
An additional 409 homes will be given fiber access by the end of the year. The Green County RDOF award of $1.5 million will be supplemented by an investment of $2.3 million by Windstream.
Windstream’s Kentucky RDOF commitment is to bring FTTH services to more than 15,700 addresses across the state during the next six years. The Greensburg deployment was the first RDOF-related work done by Windstream in the state.
“Partnerships are the key to building the future of rural areas,” Stephanie Bell, Kinetic’s vice president of state government relations, said in a press release. “Kinetic is proud to be a partner with Green County to accelerate rural fiber deployment. After all, we live, work, and play in the communities we serve.”
Windstream is in the midst of a $2 billion multi-year initiative across its 18-state footprint. It has invested more than $211 million in Kentucky from 2019 through last year and served more than 120,000 addresses as of the end of 2021.
Windstream was one of the big winners from the RDOF auction, which raised $9.2 billion. In early December 2020, the FCC said that Windstream had won $522.9 million for 192,567 locations across 18 states.
In January, the FCC released the fifth public notice of authorization of bids in the RDOF auction. Windstream was among 51 companies that were authorized, with the go-ahead in 14 states.
Not all of the company’s moves in Kentucky are related to the RDOF. Last month, Windstream said that it is expanding its Kinetic broadband service to 5,000 residents of Knox County.
The company said in January that during 2021 it added 55,000 broadband subscribers to its Kinetic brand and 523,000 locations gained access to its gigabit services
