Governor Tim Walz announced over $50 million in grants to expand broadband access to an estimated 8,900 homes and businesses throughout Minnesota on Tuesday.
The Easton Telephone Company is one of twenty four broadband expansion projects that will receive grants from the Department of Employment and Economic Development’s Office of Broadband Development, helping deploy new broadband infrastructure. Using the grant funding, providers plan to expand high speed broadband – offering speeds of at least 100 megabits per second download and 20 Mbps upload.
The grants come from two DEED programs: $33.3 million from DEED’s flagship Border to Border Broadband Program, through which broadband provider grantees are reimbursed for up to half the eligible cost of deploying broadband infrastructure, with funding for a single project capped at $10 million and $19.7 million form the Low Population Density Program, which offers grants to providers building broadband service to areas of Minnesota with particularly low population densities and high broadband deployment costs. The grants can be worth up to $10 million and cover up to 75% of the total cost of a project.
The Easton Telephone Company will receive $435,383 through the Border to Border Broadband Program.
DEED will open another $50 million grant round for broadband infrastructure development later this month.