Alabama News
Governor Kay Ivey on Monday announced that she has extended the successful Alabama Broadband Connectivity for Students program into 2021 thanks to a provision in the latest COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress last week and signed by President Trump on Sunday evening.
Governor Ivey’s goal is to ensure that the families currently benefiting from ABC for Students have continuity of service through the program, which has provided access to high-speed internet for about 200,000 Alabama students throughout the fall and was slated to end on the original CARES Act spending deadline of December 30, 2020. The relief package included an extension into 2021 of the federal deadline for states to spend CARES Act funds allocated earlier in 2020. The current funding is anticipated to cover the costs for current participants through the spring semester of 2021.
Alabama urgently needs broadband for every community and family
Updated Dec 10, 2020;
By Marsha Folsom | Resource Fiber
When people ask how to bring business and jobs to our state, particularly in disadvantaged rural areas, I readily quip . broadband and bamboo.
My partners and I co-founded Resource Fiber, LLC nine years ago and we are the only American company bringing bamboo growing and manufacturing – a $60 billion industry dominated by China – to the U.S. beginning in the state of Alabama. We’re generating high-wage jobs in low-income communities. We manufacture high-value industrial products and we are introducing a high-dollar cash crop to local areas suffering from high poverty rates, stagnant wages and out-migration.