The U.S. Agriculture Department adjusted rules and made...
The U.S. Agriculture Department adjusted rules and made new loans to help with rural broadband deployment. It changed up its Community Connect broadband grant rules to unserved rural broadband communities, USDA said Friday (http://bit.ly/105bgNJ). The changes involve simplifying the application…
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process and allowing applicants to use a department Web-based mapping tool to show where they plan to service, the department said. It said applicants will have more flexibility in how they pull together the 15 percent matching funds required in the process. The government will also now be able to prioritize its funding for counties experiencing persistent poverty as well as communities with declining population and extremely rural areas, it said. The department began new funding opportunities for rural broadband deployment in Nebraska and Montana, it said Wednesday. “In Nebraska, Hartington Telecommunications Co., Inc., an RUS [Rural Utilities Service] borrower since 1956, will use a $5.265 million loan to replace copper cable with Fiber-to-the-Home technology to serve customers with a state-of-the-art telecommunications system,” the department said (http://1.usa.gov/ZFjqLL). “InterBel Telephone Cooperative, Inc., in Montana, will receive a $20.8 million loan to complete a Fiber-to-the-Premises network to help meet future growth requirements.”