In a ceremony on February 13, 2020 at Battle Mountain Farm in College Grove, TN, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that Ben Lomand Holdings, Inc. (you may be more familiar with the local name of VolFirst) was awarded the Broadband ReConnect grant for Cumberland County! United States Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue was on hand to make the grant announcements. The application process for this grant began back in May of 2019 with local support meetings held at both Crab Orchard Elementary and North Cumberland Elementary Schools. Many support letters were submitted from community leaders, local, state, and federal elected officials, business owners, real estate agents, and potential customers, to name a few. The data I gathered from the over 1,500 responses to my online broadband survey was also submitted. The Ben Lomand staff worked diligently with me and my office staff (thanks Beth and Torey!) to submit an application that would be competitive, and it worked! This truly was a community effort, as were all of the broadband grant applications that have been submitted this year.
Cumberland Co. MayorAllen Foster, left, and
US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, right.
(Photo provided)
The grant area covers approximately 100 square miles in Cumberland County. Grant funding will be used by Ben Lomand to construct new state of the art Fiber to the Premise (FTTP) facilities in order to enable offering high-speed broadband in an isolated, mountainous service area remotely located in the northeastern section of Cumberland County (see maps for specific areas).
The grant amount from the USDA Reconnect program is $2,240,407. Ben Lomand is providing matching funds in the amount of $746,803 for a total project cost of $2,987,210. A total of 222 homes and 561 people will have access to the new broadband services via the grant, but this is a win for even more households in Cumberland County as the build will put fiber infrastructure in place to allow Ben Lomand to provide service to many other customers after fulfilling the grant requirements.
BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE
Clearance Sale HELD OVER!!
The Broadband ReConnect Program is a pilot program offering unique federal financing options in the form of grants, loans, and combinations thereof to create or improve rural e-Connectivity for rural customers across America.
Thank you to Ben Lomand, USDA, and everyone that worked so hard to make this happen. There are still a lot of areas in Cumberland County with very poor broadband service, including the area where I live. Remember, this is the first step in this process. Even if you are in the same boat as me, we have progress. We have providers that are now interested in Cumberland County. We didn’t get in this mess overnight, and we won’t get out if it that way either, but relief is coming. We will continue to keep a hopeful watch for the state broadband grant award announcements that should be made known in March. Keep your fingers crossed!
Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter and I had worked together on a meeting with Frontier Executives since late last year. During the recent meeting, we detailed the frustrations that the public is having in both Putnam and Cumberland Counties with the poor service and lack of availability from Frontier. I stressed that these issues are more than anecdotal. They are real. The people of Cumberland and Putnam counties deserve better. The goal is for improved service or for a sale of Frontier. Mayor Porter and I were thankful to have strong support on this issue from other elected officials in attendance, including US Congressman John Rose, Tennessee Speaker Cameron Sexton, Tennessee Senator Paul Bailey, Tennessee Representative Ryan Williams, Crossville Mayor James Mayberry, and Cookeville Mayor Ricky Shelton.
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