October 25, 2019
There’s still a digital divide between rural and urban America, but USDA is working on it. This week the agency invested more than $9 million in broadband infrastructure. The first two investments for the USDA Reconnect pilot program go to Tennessee and South Carolina.
“We offer 20 awards throughout 14 states,” Chad Rupe, Rural Utilities Service Administrator for USDA, who says that the Community Connect grant program, in particular, has seen very high demand.
The Rural Broadband Infrastructure project will help create and improve rural e-connectivity for nearly 4,000 rural households in South Carolina. “That is a great opportunity that we have to be able to allow these farmers and ranchers – your viewers, all of rural America – the opportunity to expand their markets,” says Rupe.
One South Carolina county matched the grant for another 3.2 million dollars. That money will go toward farms, businesses, rural health care, and homes.
Rupe says that success stories such as this are helping to ensure that further such opportunities will be coming in the near future: “We’ve got another $550 million that Congress appropriated to us last year, so we’ll have another round of Reconnect.”
And with at least 24 million Americans without access to high-speed broadband, that is welcome news!