The South Carolina Broadband Office (SCBBO) announced the historic conclusion of its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant programs that have resulted in the commitment of $400 million to expand high-speed internet access to over 112,380 unserved or underserved Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) statewide.

The North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s (NCDIT) Division of Broadband and Digital Equity announced an additional $112 million in Completing Access to Broadband (CAB) program projects to connect 25,903 households and businesses in 19 counties to high-speed internet. These projects will be funded by more than $61 million from the federal American Rescue Plan awarded by NCDIT, more than $25 million from counties and nearly $26 million from selected broadband providers:

The National Telecommunications Information Administration's (NTIA) $3 billion Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) aims to expand access to and adoption of broadband service on tribal land. NTIA is distributing these funds through two rounds of grant funding; NTIA finished announcing awards for the first round of funding in September of 2023, and the application period for the second funding round closed in March 2024.

Governor Kay Ivey (R-AL) awarded nearly $53.5 million to continue the expansion of high-speed internet service in Alabama. The grant awarded to the Alabama Fiber Network, a coalition of electric and generation/transmission cooperatives, will help develop the second phase of the state’s “middle-mile” broadband network deployment. The project will impact 24 Alabama counties.

An unexpected volunteer, a geographic information system (GIS) mapping expert helped a rural community in Texas establish its broadband connection. Bernie South is the GIS volunteer who mapped the data using information from the Census, school district hotpost addresses and areas of growth in the county. South began volunteering with Bastrop County Cares during the pandemic to vaccinate people, he said.

Wyoming-based Visionary Broadband’s got quite the resume in both the fiber and wireless space. Visionary won nearly $27 million in ARPA grant awards to provide fiber broadband in remote areas of Wyoming. It’s also got a foothold in Colorado, Montana and Washington state. State grants have helped Visionary recently gain seven new markets, said CEO Brian Worthen. Those include three markets in Colorado, two in Montana and two in Wyoming.

Spectrum announced the launch of Spectrum Internet, Mobile, TV and Voice services to more than 2,000 homes and small businesses in Rutherford County (NC). Spectrum’s newly constructed fiber-optic network buildout in Rutherford County is part of the company’s approximately $5 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund-related investment in unserved rural communities, partly offset by $1.2 billion in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) RDOF auction. The company’s RDOF expansion will provide broadband access to 1.3 million customer locations across 24 states in the coming years.

Governor Tate Reeves (R-MS) announced that the Office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi (BEAM) recently approved 24 broadband infrastructure projects to be funded by the Capital Projects Fund (CPF). BEAM anticipates additional CPF projects to be approved on a rolling basis throughout the summer. These initial CPF projects will provide approximately $70.9 million of grant funding to build internet service to approximately 27,000 households in 19 counties across the state. Approved project locations by county are:

Across North Carolina, 63 community service, nonprofit, higher education and regional organizations will get $30 million in Digital Champion grants to help North Carolinians access and use high-speed internet.

More than 23 million households will lose affordable internet access as part of a pandemic-era federal program that provided low-income households with a credit of between $30 and $75 toward their monthly service bill.