Nebraska gets another $5.6 million for broadband expansion

LINCOLN — Nebraska acquired one other $5.6 million in federal funding to dedicate to broadband growth.

Gov. Pete Ricketts introduced through a press launch Tuesday that the state had acquired the cash by way of two grants from the Nationwide Telecommunications and Data Administration to develop strategic plans to broaden Nebraska’s broadband service.

Roughly $5 million of the brand new funding comes from the Broadband Fairness, Entry, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, with the remaining $600,000 coming from the State Digital Fairness Planning Grant Program. Each grant applications have been created through the bipartisan infrastructure invoice, the Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act, handed a yr in the past.

Ricketts credited the working group he created earlier this yr, Join Nebraska, for making use of for the grants. 

Nebraska will use the BEAD grant to generate a state broadband map, arrange outreach actions to stakeholders statewide and allow the Nebraska Public Service Fee to rent extra employees. The opposite grant can be used to construct a plan to safe web connections statewide, and promote know-how like telehealth and precision agriculture.

“Now that now we have acquired planning funds for each the Digital Fairness Program and the BEAD Program, we will start the subsequent section in our plan to attach each Nebraskan,” Patrick Redmond, state broadband coordinator, mentioned within the press launch.

Nebraska has already acquired thousands and thousands from the federal authorities to broaden broadband entry. Earlier this yr, the U.S. Division of the Treasury accredited $87.7 million for Nebraska to extend broadband web entry to an estimated 21,000 houses and companies.

State officers count on as much as $100 million of federal {dollars} nonetheless to return to assist broadband infrastructure, in keeping with the press launch.

All federal funding Nebraska has acquired thus far comes from the federal infrastructure invoice, which was signed into legislation by President Joe Biden final November. It acquired combined assist from Nebraska’s all-Republican congressional delegation. U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer and Rep. Don Bacon supported the laws, whereas Sen. Ben Sasse, Rep. Adrian Smith and then-Rep. Jeff Fortenberry voted in opposition to it.

Increasing broadband entry has been a precedence amongst state lawmakers since at the least 2018, with the creation of the Rural Broadband Activity Drive. Since then, Ricketts has signed a number of items of laws allocating over $150 million to develop broadband infrastructure and join almost 48,000 households.

“In right now’s digital world, broadband connectivity is primary infrastructure,” Ricketts mentioned within the press launch. “Irrespective of the space Nebraskans stay from a metropolis, they need to have entry to the net instruments they should stay, study and do enterprise.”