Putnam To Use Combo Of State And Federal COVID Funding For Broadband

Federal and state COVID funding has created the perfect opportunity to explore fiber internet connections for most Putnam County homes.

Mayor Randy Porter said the state has $400 million allocated for local broadband grants. The county has some $15 million coming from the American Rescue Plan.

“They’re going to be looking at projects specifically where a county would put some of its American Rescue funds into the project and work with a local provider to expand into areas that don’t have high speed,” Porter said.

Porter said about 40-50 percent of the county lacks high-speed internet. Porter said the future endeavor awaits guidance from the state on how the grants will be distributed.

“We’re guessing it’ll be a RFP process where we put out to the internet providers, and let them give us their proposals of what they would do,” Porter said. “Then we come up with a partnership and submit that to the state.”

Porter said he expects the state to pick up a large portion of the costs with the county matching with its federal funding.