Agriculture Completes First Round Of Broadband Grants
The Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service announced Tuesday that it has concluded the first round of broadband funding by awarding nearly $22 million in loans and grants to the Reservation Telephone Cooperative to provide broadband services to residents in and around North Dakota's Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
The department said in a statement that the cooperative will receive a 10.95 million loan and a $10.95 million grant to provide broadband service in parts of both North Dakota and Montana. It is aimed at improving economic and educational opportunities in one of the poorest areas of the country, which has experienced poverty rates as high as 28 percent and a 40 percent unemployment rate.
The "broadband projects announced by USDA will open up educational, job and business opportunities to hundreds of thousands of Americans living in rural areas," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in the statement.
RUS and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration were given $7.2 billion in economic stimulus funds to provide grants aimed at expanding broadband adoption and access. As part of the first round of funding, RUS has provided more than $1 billion of the $2.5 billion it received for broadband grants, the department said. The projects are aimed at providing high-speed Internet access to an estimated 529,000 households and 96,000 rural business and public facilities across 31 states, one territory and 17 tribal lands and predominantly Alaska Native regions, USDA said.
The department said it is reviewing the second round of applications and will announce the winners before the end of the 2010 fiscal year.
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