{"id":36463,"date":"2020-08-20T18:09:37","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T23:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/?p=36463"},"modified":"2020-09-07T21:50:31","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T02:50:31","slug":"broadband-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/broadband-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Broadband Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mississippi<\/a>
The blue areas are the 15 electric co-ops that were awarded funds and the yellow areas are the projected areas for installation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Mississippi Public Utilities Staff announced today the awarding of $65 million in grant money to electric cooperatives that will deploy fiber to provide high-speed broadband internet service to unserved and underserved areas of rural Mississippi.<\/p>\n

The $65 million became available after the State Legislature passed Senate Bill 3046 \u2013 The Mississippi Electric Cooperatives Broadband COVID-19 Act \u2013 earlier this year. The money became available after the state was awarded federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding.<\/p>\n

The electric cooperatives will match the grant money with $65 million to provide a total of $130 million for expanding broadband access across the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like to thank Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, Sen. Joel Carter, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and State Rep. Scott Bounds, chairman of the House Public Utilities Committee. I also want to thank Public Utilities Staff Executive Director Sally Doty and her entire staff for their hard work expediting the grant process,\u201d said Michael Callahan, executive vice president and CEO of the Electric Cooperatives of Mississippi.<\/p>\n

Callahan also said the electric cooperatives look forward to working with the Public Utilities Staff to meet the approved deadlines for utilizing the grant money and bringing broadband service to rural parts of the state.<\/p>\n

North East Mississippi Electric Power Association applied for and was awarded $3,706,380.22. The grant money will fund high-speed internet access to many of the underserved areas including those areas served by the Lafayette Springs and Enterprise substations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are certainly excited about receiving this grant. Ultimately, this makes it possible to add customers into our first construction phase instead of waiting for the second phase\u201d, said North East\u2019s CEO, Keith Hayward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese grant funds will make a tremendous impact on our ability to begin the delivery process to the most rural parts of the state,\u201d Callahan said.<\/p>\n

Fifteen electric cooperatives from across Mississippi applied for the grant money.<\/p>\n

Callahan said after the fiber work funded by the grants begins, there will be broadband internet access available to 10,000 homes by this December. Once the local grant projects are finished, there will be broadband service available to more than 35,000 homes in rural Mississippi.<\/p>\n

There could be additional grant money available at the end of the year and electric cooperatives would have the opportunity to apply for that funding at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North East Mississippi Electric Power Association applied for and was awarded $3,706,380.22. The grant money will fund high-speed internet access to many of the underserved areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":36466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,264],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nemepa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}