Kentucky's Statewide Broadband on Track for 2019-20

The Kentucky Wired plan has been delayed and survived a near-death experience during the 2018 legislative session, but the “middle mile” broadband network plan now intends to roll out within 18 to 24 months with its original intent and focus – putting gigabit-speed internet service nodes into every commonwealth county. Originally, the 120-county Kentucky Wired program was to be complete by September 2018 at a cost of around $324 million, most of that coming from Australia’s Macquarie Capital in a public-private partnership deal. It was and still is envisioned as a crucial economic development stepping stone for Eastern Kentucky. The 3,200-mile construction project fell behind initially due to delays in getting pole-attachment agreements from both AT&T and Windstream, said Phillip Brown, executive director of the Kentucky Communications Network Authority (KCNA). With cost overruns climbing to more than $180 million, and KCNA needing to pay out nearly $70 million it did not have in the coming two years, there was a sentiment among legislators and some public policy groups to kill the project. It got no funding in the budget bill sent to Gov. Matt Bevin, who vetoed it due to concerns that it spent too much and lacked enough emergency funding.