Grants pay for local broadband expansion

MULLAN — Who knew that a world-wide pandemic was all it would take to get high-speed internet to rural Silver Valley communities?

Colleen Rosson, executive director of the Silver Valley Economic Development Corporation, announced Wednesday that the cities of Mullan and Wardner will be receiving Idaho Broadband Grant funding to improve their local internet situations.

This grant was created by the Idaho Coronavirus Financial Advisory Committee and Idaho Commerce. The entities allocated $50 million of the more than $1 billion Idaho CARES Act funds to expand broadband internet to rural communities.

When the application period for the grants opened in late-June, the Shoshone County cities of Mullan, Wardner, Wallace and Osburn sent in their pitches to receive funding.

In order to be considered, applicants had to explain how the grant funding would be used in assisting rural communities (3,000 inhabitants or less) with challenges in telehealth, distance learning and telecommuting caused by COVID-19. It just so happens that Silver Valley communities were already dealing with challenges in these areas due to poor internet speeds and connections. All the COVID-19 pandemic did was push the issue to center stage.

“These small communities are never on the radar for internet providers,” Rosson said. “There’s not enough return-on-investment, there’s not enough subscribers, it costs too much, etc. So small communities are kind of forgotten when it comes to broadband expansion.”

The grant qualifications also required that if internet upgrades were to be done, the projects had to be “shovel-ready” and the provider must be able to offer minimum download speeds of 25 mbps (megabits per second) and upload speeds of 3 mbps.

As of Thursday, the proposals sent by Mullan and Wardner have been accepted, while Wallace and Osburn’s are still in review.

Coming in at a substantial $169,000, Mullan’s grant is the largest of the bunch. These funds are already being used to pay internet provider J&R Electronics to install hi-capacity, point-to-point (and point to multi-point) microwave systems. These pieces of equipment will create a wireless network that J&R Electronics vice president Ian Caldwell estimates should reach more than 80% of homes in Mullan and provide speeds around 60/10 mbps.

J&R crews have already been working on the project for a week now and expect to finish by Halloween.

The other approved grant in Wardner clocks in at $78,000. These funds are allocated for Ziply Fiber to install aerial fiber along the telephone polls right through town.

Once the lines are in place, the entire city of Wardner will have access to high-speed internet packages possibly offering gig-level speeds.

Ziply’s work in Wardner should be finished by Dec. 15 and is just a small piece of its larger upgrade project to give Kellogg access to gig-speed internet as well.

The other two yet to be accepted grant submissions for Wallace and Osburn would provide J&R Electronics with $31,092 and $29,535, respectfully, to install microwave equipment in those cities.

Since J&R already has a presence in Wallace, the new equipment there would simply allow them to offer service to areas that don’t have a direct line of sight to their current setup — such as homes on the south hill of town.

In Osburn, the grant funding would get J&R’s equipment into the city for the first time and establish a network that would hopefully be able to service most of the area.

More information on the Wallace and Osburn projects will become available if and when their grant proposals are accepted. Their status should be known by next week.

Rosson and the SVEDC were instrumental in helping these Silver Valley cities apply for this unique opportunity. In addition to dealing with a lot of the red tape that went into the process, Rosson also drafted three of the four applications (and assisted with the fourth).

“We’re really excited because this moves so many things forward,” she said. “This opportunity opens up a lot of doors to getting connectivity to other towns as well.”