Broadband grant apps fall short

By Kevin O’Brien

Two Internet companies fell just short of qualifying for state grant funding for five proposed broadband projects in the central and western portions of Marathon County.

Erin Andrews, the county’s broadband coordinator, told members of the broadband task force on Monday that grant applications submitted by Frontier Communications and Charter Communications were denied by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, which didn’t have enough money to fund all of the proposals from around Wisconsin.

According to an update from Andrews to the task force, the PSC received 124 applications requesting a total of $221.6 million in grant funds, but only $43.2 million was available. The grant applications “scored well,” she said, but were ultimately not among the 28 projects selected by the PSC.

“There was a very limited amount of funding for it, and a great deal of interest across the state,” she said.

Last fall, the county board passed a resolution pledging up to $495,100 as a local match for the grants, which would have provided high-speed Internet access to nearly 5,000 homes and businesses in the towns of towns of Rietbrock, Wien, Rib Falls, Cassel, Spencer, McMillan, Day, Emmet, Spencer and Green Valley.

Many of the areas covered by the applications were identified as high priorities by the task force after a previous Internet service provider, LTE Broadband, lost its grant from the Federal Communications Commission, which determined the company did not have

See BROADBAND/ page 2 Broadband

Continued from page 1

the resources to do the work. This left several townships without any immediate prospects for broadband expansion.

Going forward, task force chairman John Robinson said the county needs to bolster its grant applications by pledging more resources as a match.

“One of the areas that I think dragged us down just a little bit was local participation,” he said about the failed PSC applications.

Andrews agreed, noting that the county needs to start identifying local matches for applications to the federal Broadband Access, Equity and Deployment (BEAD) program, which has allocated over $1 billion for Wisconsin projects.

Task force member Eric Budleski said he has asked townships in his area for contributions toward a broadband project fund, but he has “met with some resistance” by town officials who want to wait and see if Internet providers come into their areas first.

“I think we need to do more to educate these towns,” he said, noting that even a relatively small amount of local money could go a long way in securing grant funds.

Robinson said the BEAD grants may be the last chance for the county to obtain outside funding for future broadband expansion. “If we’re not in a good position, there’s no guarantee that there will be state or federal funding in the future,” he said. “So, we have to strengthen our applications.”

In other news, the PSC has notified Frontier Communications that it is suspending reimbursement payments for the company’s projects in Marathon, Clark and Lincoln county due to apparent errors in Frontier’s grant application. In response, Frontier has asked that the PSC modify its application to reduce the number of served households from 10,000 down to 6,889 and to cut its funding request by $1 million.

Andrews said Frontier and the PSC have been going back and forth to address issues with the grant project, and it’s unclear when the PSC will make a final decision.

“We don’t really know how long it’s going to take for them to determine whether not this grant is going to be approved with modifications or revoked, in which case those addresses would become eligible for BEAD funding,” she said.

Robinson noted that the county has pledged $944,000 of ARPA money as a match for Frontier’s grant application in order to provide access to underserved and unserved areas of the county, but a recent progress report shows that most of Frontier’s recent work has been done in the Wausau metro area.

“We will continue to monitor it,” he said. “We’ve been having those conversations with Frontier, but there’s a point in time where we need to know if they are going to be advancing.”

Libraries see high Wi-Fi demand

Alexander Johnson, support services manager for the Marathon County Public Library System, told the task force that a pair of initiatives to provide more Wi-Fi Internet access in rural areas are drawing a lot of interest from patrons.

First, the MPCL has installed wifi antennas at several branch locations, including those in Athens, Edgar and Stratford, that allow people to access the Internet from the parking lots, even when the library is closed. Alexander said branch directors have reported that the antennas have been “very helpful” for the public, and the MCPL is working to get them installed at the remaining branches, including the one in Marathon City.

The county needs to get permission from each municipality to install the antennas, and Johnson said they have removed a provision from their agreements that required the municipality to purchase insurance to cover any damage if the antenna fell at some point.

“The devices are very light, so we didn’t think that would be necessary,” he said.

MCPL is also running a federally funded pilot program that allows libraries to loan out Wi-Fi “hotspots” to patrons so they can get Internet access at home. Alexander said they have been running the program for a little over a year at this point, and once the federal funding runs out, the MPCL will have to consider whether it wants to add the cost to its operational budget.

“We have 28 hotspots right now; they are very popular,” he said. “We basically can’t keep them on the shelves.”

The hotspots allow patrons to access the Internet from anywhere they can get a Verizon cell phone signal, he said. Patrons need to sign a statement agreeing to certain content restrictions, and if they don’t return the device on time, it is deactivated, he said.

“Both of these efforts have been very popular with patrons and we at the library believe that demonstrates a need for additional Internet access, and we can help to fill it,” he said. “The demand for Internet access exceeds our ability to fill it at this point.”