ReConnect Loan and Grant Program

Broadband deserts beget population deserts as many in rural areas seek greener, high-speed broadband pastures. Counties with poor broadband are seeing people move away to get better jobs or to get broadband for their kids. Real estate agents are reporting that it’s extremely difficult to sell a home that has no broadband option. Several studies have shown that students that grow up without home broadband don’t perform nearly as well as students with broadband. There are hundreds of rural counties working hard to get fiber broadband with the hope of stemming the population loss.

In a 2021 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that some small businesses lack access to broadband, but may benefit from federal programs that fund deployment in rural areas. Small businesses can likely reap the benefits of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) and the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Rural Utilities Service's (RUS) funding to expand broadband deployment.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is awarding $502 million in loans and grants to provide high-speed internet access for rural residents and businesses in 20 states. USDA is making investments through the third funding round of the ReConnect Program. USDA is making 32 awards in Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Under Secretary Xochitl Torres Small warned changing the definition of what counts as “rural” broadband could negatively impact programs like the agency’s ReConnect initiative, resulting in a greater disparity between available funding and requests than already exists.

While policymakers continue to make substantial investments toward universal broadband, these investments still leave gaps in Tribal connectivity. The three primary general-purpose broadband deployment grants accessible to Tribes include the Federal Communication Commission's High-Cost program, the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA's) Reconnect program, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA's) Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is accepting applications for ReConnect Program loans and grants to expand access to high-speed internet for millions of people in rural America nationwide. USDA is making more than $1 billion available from the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act (IIJA). The USDA has made several improvements to the ReConnect Program for the current round of applications:

Pershing County, Nevada is one of many rural communities throughout the US that will receive new, fiber optic, high-speed internet connections through the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) ReConnect Program.

Vermont has been funding a considerable portion of projects undertaken by communications union districts (CUDs) – local organizations representing at least two towns that will own the broadband infrastructure that they deploy. One of these CUDs is NEK (Northeast Kingdom) Broadband, which represents five counties. NEK Broadband expects to need between $165 million and $185 million to achieve the goal of ensuring high-speed broadband internet service is available to the most rural and underserved communities.

The NCTA—The Internet and Television Association, an industry trade and lobbying association for large cable companies, recently touted big increases in broadband speeds since the start of the pandemic. Specifically, NCTA states that the average U.S. download speed has grown from 138 Mbps in March 2020, the first month of the pandemic, to 226 Mbps in June 2022. Obviously, the cable companies are taking credit for much of the speed increase, and to some extent, that’s true.