USDA Provides Loans and Grants to help ‘ReConnect’ Rural North Dakota

The grants are part of the ReConnect pilot program, which will provide $23 million in grants and loans to rural North Dakota telecom cooperatives to expand their coverage to cover nearly 2000 miles of un-serviced land.

FARGO, N.D. – Over 2,000 households are set to receive gigabit internet access after grants from the USDA will help expand fiber projects in rural North Dakota.

The grants are part of the ReConnect pilot program, which will provide $23 million in grants and loans to rural North Dakota telecom cooperatives to expand their coverage to cover nearly 2000 miles of un-serviced land.

For these rural communities, this new access will prevent them from being left behind.

“Quality broadband services is as an essential utility as water, sewage and electricity. If you don’t have quality broadband these days, you can’t compete in the world economy as well as you could with it. It’s as important to their financial and economic success as any other utility” said Clare Carlson, the state director of the USDA Rural Development department.

The USDA and NTCA say that the economic impact from this new pilot program will be massive, and lay the foundation for wide-scale deployment of precision agriculture programs like Grand Farm.

“I think nationwide we’ve looked at it having an economic impact of about $85 billion in terms of what broadband brings to rural communities. If you think about it, it’s not just that you’re enticing businesses, you are allowing people to telecommute, but you are also providing support for different businesses and edge providers out in that area” said Shirley Bloomfield, the CEO of NTCA, the Rural Broadband Association.

Annie Keffeler runs the non-profit A Moment of Freedom. It’s a horse therapy program, and her patients rely on the internet to get most of their important medical records.

“It’s been really frustrating when you’re trying to send documentation like this, and you don’t have DakTel Fiber Optics. A lot of times the files would take hours, sometimes up to 18 to 24 hours to send, and the only reason they would send is because I would pick up my cell phone and drive to Jamestown just to pick up a signal.” said Annie Keffeler, the founder of A Moment of Freedom.

With the ReConnect program, her patients and volunteers will have instant access to those files at a moments notice thanks to the expanded coverage to the non-profits base of operations, Buchanan.

“It’s going to be a lot easier for us. It’ll be nice to have an actual signal.” said Keffeler.

Telecom providers Dakota Central and POLAR Communications are using the $23 million to reach over 2500 homes and over 2200 miles of land.