This month, construction work will ramp up in Boulder Junction.
It’s a tangible step toward providing fiberoptic broadband service to hundreds of homes and businesses in the town.
But that’s not the only good new broadband advocates in Boulder Junction got recently.
Fifty-eight broadband expansion projects across the state were awarded grant funding by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.
Out of those 58, Boulder Junction got the largest award, claiming $2.2 million to fund Phase 2 of its broadband expansion plan.
Combined with state money it got for Phase 1, the town has now been awarded more than $3.8 million.
“The week leading up to the announcement, we just started to get the instinct that maybe we were a good enough application that we would be fully funded. Lo and behold, on the 19th of March, we learned that we were fully funded,” said Bill Niemuth of the Boulder Junction High Speed Broadband Expansion Committee.
Press Release
Gov. Evers, WEDC, PSC Announce $100,000 Grant to Assist Drone-based Broadband to Serve Students in Eagle River
MADISON Gov.
Tony Evers today with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) and the Public Service Commission (PSC) announced the WEDC will provide a $100,000 Capacity Building Grant to the Forest County Economic Development Partnership for a pilot program testing a tethered, drone-based system to provide high-speed internet in rural areas.
A key part of that test kicks off today with the announcement of a partnership between Wisconsin TeleLift and the Northland Pines School District. The six-month project will use Wisconsin TeleLift’s tethered drone platforms fitted with cell phone towers to provide high-speed internet access to the roughly 10 percent of district students who currently have none.