Supporters of the need to bring high-speed Internet to rural areas — like Texas County — cheered the news that telephone provider CenturyLink Inc. would accept funds that would bring broadband service to another 158,000 households and businesses.
CenturyLink is accepting funding (under a program called 33 Connect American Fund, phase II) from the FCC to bring Internet service with speeds of at least 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload to approximately 1.2 million locations in FCC-designated, high-cost census blocks. The company is accepting a total of approximately $500 million a year for six years nationwide. Of that amount, about $77.85 million is in Missouri. Specific locations were not available.
The news was met with praise from the Southern Ozarks Area Redevelopment — SOAR — which had advocated for Internet access for rural Missouri, including Texas County.
“This is a game changer,” Mary Sheid, the organization’s first president, said. “I can think of no one factor that affects every student or business in our rural area that is as important as rural high speed Internet.”
Houston Superintendent Scott Dill, current president of SOAR, agreed. “This addition of fiber optic and copper lines in combination means information from global sources is available to our students and people at speeds currently only available in more urban areas,” he said.
“We’re pleased to help bridge the urban-rural digital divide by bringing high-speed broadband to more than 158,000 households and businesses in high-cost markets in Missouri,” said Duane Ring, CenturyLink senior vice president of global field operations. “While CAF II funding does not address all markets in our footprint, our company investment for CAF II is significant, and we look forward to working closely with Missouri policymakers to find funding and deployment solutions for additional markets.”
“I’m happy to hear CenturyLink and the FCC will bring faster Internet to rural areas,” said State Sen. Mike Cunninghan, R-Marshfield. “School children, healthcare practitioners, business owners and families in rural areas all have reason to celebrate the announcement that CenturyLink is accepting the FCC’s Connect America Funds to bring high-speed Internet to more high cost areas of the state.”
Once CenturyLink’s initial CAF II six-year build-out plan is finalized over the coming months, construction is expected to begin in early 2016. Over the next six years, CenturyLink will be required to build out broadband to 40 percent of the funded locations by the end of 2017, 60 percent by the end of 2018 and 80 percent by the end of 2019 and 100 percent by the end of 2020.
The FCC created the CAF program in 2011 to facilitate high-speed Internet access in high-cost locations by transitioning Universal Service Fund money that was supporting rural landline service — and appears as an assessment on telephone bills — to the build-out of broadband infrastructure in rural communities.
CenturyLink previously accepted approximately $75 million in CAF phase I interim, one-time support to bring broadband with 4 Mbps download speed to nearly 114,000 unserved rural locations.