Giant receives grant

Rural residents in northeastern Kansas have had few options to choose from when it comes to high-speed internet service, but a local communications service is getting a $6.3-million boost from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program to change that, it has been reported.

On Thursday, Sept. 22, national Rural Development Under Secretary Xochitl Torres Small visited Holton to announce the $6,319,640 grant award, distributed through RD’s ReConnect program, to JBN Telephone and Giant Communications for the deployment of what JBN General Manager Austin Taylor described as “fiber-to-the-home” internet service.

“We couldn’t be more happy to be here in this room, talking about JBN and this opportunity,” Taylor said during Thursday’s press conference announcing the grant. “We’re thankful, and we look forward to the many opportunities that are going to continue to come to bring fiber to rural America.”

Taylor said the grant will help fund JBN’s proposed $8.4-million project to bring fiberoptic internet to rural communities in an eight-county area in northeastern Kansas and southeastern Nebraska, including Jackson, Nemaha, Pottawatomie, Republic, Washington and Riley counties in Kansas and Jefferson and Thayer counties in Nebraska, covering four of JBN’s telephone exchanges.

“When the project’s complete, we’re going to be serving fiber-to-the-home to 344 subscribers that are served by DSL with speeds that won’t allow them to participate in school, remote work from home, telemedicine and so many things that keep these folks connected to what’s most important,” said Taylor, who noted that communities served by the project included Soldier, Havensville, Barnes and “part of Waterville.”

The grant is part of more than $501 million in RD ReConnect program loans and grants to be distributed to communications providers across 20 states to bring high-speed internet to rural areas, a goal of the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack that Torres Small said JBN and Giant are helping to fulfill.

“We know that by investing in rural areas, we’re supporting all of America,” Torres Small said. “Rural communities are places where our food, our fiber and so much of our fuel comes from, and it’s crucial that we make sure that no matter where you live in our country, you have access to basic utilities like high speed internet.”

Taylor said JBN and Giant are planning to use the grant to install 208 miles of fiberoptic internet cable along roads in the eight-county region, then connect the cable to customers’ homes, over the next five years.

“At JBN, our primary goal is to keep rural Americans connected to what’s most important,” he said. “Over the course of the last few years, it’s been clear and evident that we have rural communities that aren’t connected to the things most important, their family across the country or across the state, or even across town. That’s kind of our priority.”

Torres Small said she shared Taylor’s excitement in announcing that JBN and Giant were expanding their services to reach hard-to-reach areas in the region.

“Their project shows that,” she said of JBN and Giant. “They are investing in the hardest-to-reach places, the hardest-to-reach homes, and they’re also investing in ways that will increase and future-proof the speed and be affordable, so when it gets to those homes, it’s at a price that people across rural Kansas are comfortable with.”

She also compared it to government efforts to expand electricity to underserved rural areas a century ago.

“Rural Development at USDA exists because of the Rural Electrification Act, where people decided that no matter where out in the country you live, you should be able to turn your light on at night,” Torres Small said. “Now we know that high speed internet is a modern-day necessity, too.”

The grant announcement was made initially by Christy Davis, Rural Development state director for Kansas, who noted that the grant was part of an investment made during the third funding round of the ReConnect program. Of the 32 recipents of grants and loans in the third funding round, JBN was the only recipient of funds.

Torres Small added that applications for ReConnect’s fourth funding round were due by Nov. 2.

The Holton Recorder

109 W. Fourth St.
Holton, KS 66436
Phone: 785-364-3141
 

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