USDA announces another $759 million of grants and loans for rural internet - Iowa Capital Dispatch

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is awarding grants and loans that full astir $759 cardinal to 49 high-speed net projects successful 24 states and successful different territories, the section announced Thursday.

The full includes astir $5.6 cardinal for 2 projects successful Iowa.

The national backing is portion of the department’s ReConnect Program and is partially funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The programme seeks to boost broadband entree — chiefly successful agrarian areas — to download speeds of 100 megabits per second.

“This truly is critically important to the aboriginal of agrarian America,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said during a telephone with reporters. “Whether it’s distance-learning opportunities for our students, telemedicine for hospitals, doctors, marketplace improvement for our tiny businesses oregon precision agriculture for our farmers, the net — high-speed net — is perfectly essential.”

About $668 cardinal of the caller backing is grants, with loans totaling astir $91 million. It was the 3rd specified ReConnect announcement this twelvemonth and is the largest truthful far. Another announcement is expected aboriginal this twelvemonth and 1 successful 2023, Vilsack said.

So far, the assistance and indebtedness awards person totaled astir $1.6 billion.

This week’s awards see 2 Iowa projects:

— Hamilton County: Complete Communication Services Corp. volition get a $3.8 cardinal indebtedness to physique a fibre web to link 2,827 people, 77 businesses, 5 farms and 3 acquisition facilities.

— Washington County: Kalona Cooperative Telephone Company volition get astir $1.8 cardinal — fractional of it a indebtedness and fractional a assistance — to physique a fibre web to link 463 people, 59 farms and 11 businesses.

The largest full grant is simply a $36 cardinal indebtedness to Public Service Telephone Company for a fibre task successful 7 Georgia counties that would link 21,289 people, 569 businesses, 323 farms and 29 acquisition facilities.

The largest grants announced Thursday were:

— Nearly $35 cardinal for a southwest New Mexico fibre project.
— Nearly $35 cardinal for bluish Michigan.
— Nearly $35 cardinal for a fibre web successful the Republic of Palau.
— Nearly $30 cardinal for Guam.
— More than $30 cardinal for cardinal Alaska.