Industry News – 3/25/22

On Tuesday, Governor Tom Wolf announced that $10 million has been approved for 19 projects throughout Pennsylvania under the Unserved High-Speed Broadband Funding Program. A variety of providers are set to be recipients, including RLECs Frontier and Windstream. In other BB money news, the FCC announced this week that it will open its third application window for funding from the Emergency Connectivity Fund beginning on April 28, 2022 (And closing on May 13, 2022) with an estimated $1 billion to be awarded. Finally, the just-passed federal “budget bill” includes some cash for BB in the form of $550 million for rural development programs such as ReConnect and $62.5 million for grants for telemedicine and distance learning in rural areas.