LaHood & Kinzinger Announce FCC Broadband Money

By Benjamin Cox on July 18, 2019 at 7:29pm

Two Illinois Congressman announced the deployment of money by the FCC to help bring broadband services to Central Illinois yesterday. 18th District Congressman Darin LaHood and 16th District Congressman Adam Kinzinger said that $35 million dollars will be used to bring broadband services to under served rural communities.

The Connect America Fund at the FCC will be spending $24 million dollars specifically directed at Adams, Brown, Cass, Hancock, Marshall, Peoria, Schuyler, and Stark counties, which has been designated for 10,697 unserved locations according to the FCC’s recent announcement.

Phase II of the Connect America program provides funding to local telephone companies to subsidize the cost of building new network infrastructure or performing network upgrades to provide voice and broadband service in areas where it is lacking. Companies that accept the funding have 6 years to plan and provide access to as many consumers as possible. The deployment schedule will then be determined by the broadband service provider.

The service provider will have to meet a number of requirements to keep the FCC funding, as well. 10 megabit upstream and 1 megabit upstream, network latency cannot be higher than 100 milliseconds, usage allowances must be at least 150 gigabytes per month, and they must have prices that are comparable to rates in urban centers. Phase II is scheduled to be completed by 2020.

To learn more about Connect America Fund, visit the FCC website at fcc.gov.