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.