FCC Announces Over $700 Million for Broadband in 26 States

The Federal Communications Commission said it is ready to authorize $709,060,159 in its fourth round of funding for new broadband deployments through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. Together with three prior funding wave announcements, the FCC has now announced over $1.7 billion in funding to winning bidders for new deployments. In this funding wave, 50 broadband providers will bring broadband service to over 400,000 locations in 26 states (Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin). The bulk of the funding will go to nonprofit rural electric cooperatives to deploy broadband throughout their service areas.