Two more partners working with the State of Missouri to expand the availability of broadband Internet will invest $85 million to connect 660,000 homes and businesses across northern Missouri, Gov. Jay Nixon has announced. This investment includes $66.3 million in competitive funding awarded under the federal Recovery Act.

BlueBird Media will use its grant of $45,145,250 from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to construct an ultra-high capacity middle-mile network that will make broadband affordable and accessible to approximately 600,000 households and 57,000 businesses.

United Electric Cooperative received a grant of $14,849,173 and a loan of $6,363,933 (for a total project cost of $21,213,106) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to build a last-mile network to bring broadband to more than 4,200 households and businesses in six counties in northwest Missouri.

BlueBird Media Project

BlueBird Media’s Northern Missouri Ultra-High Capacity Middle Mile project , a public-private partnership among local service providers and regional cooperatives, the state of Missouri, and national equipment vendors, proposes to bring high-speed Internet access to a largely underserved and/or economically distressed 59-county region in the northern part of the state.

The project plans to enable health care institutions to initiate regional health information exchanges and foster telehealth adoption, along with advanced medical imaging and medical collaboration in rural areas. The project would also utilize telehealth to allow regional correctional facilities to limit costly inmate transport and reduce security risks. The project’s network also plans to enable significant online testing for students, distance education, and other e-learning technologies.

The Northern Missouri Ultra-High Capacity Middle Mile project also proposes to:

• Connect as many as 350 community anchor institutions with speeds between 50 Mbps and 10 Gbps, including 213 K-12 public school buildings, 60 public safety entities, 10 community colleges, 30 healthcare facilities, and 28 government facilities.

• Facilitate more affordable and accessible broadband service for approximately 600,000 households and 57,000 businesses by enabling local Internet service providers to utilize the project’s open network.

• Construct 809 miles of new fiber and 44 new microwave towers across the region.

• Provide middle mile service to partner Socket Telecom, which recently won a $23.7M broadband award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deploy fiber-to-the-home in Callaway county and Fulton, Missouri.

The image below demonstrates the vast area of Missouri that will be served by this project.

This image shows some of the network elements and capacity that will be connected by this project.

United Electric Cooperative project

United Electric Cooperative has been approved through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to build an advanced FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) network capable of delivering high-speed broadband service up to 100 Mbps. United will also add additional fiber strands to create a dedicated 1 gigabit education network, providing our rural school systems and libraries an exponential increase in broadband access. This education intranet, named the Cooperative Network for Rural Education Advancement (CnREA) will open the door to advanced education options through the use of video delivery and shared resources.

The system will be an open network model with competing internet, video and voice providers offering advanced broadband applications directly to 4224 households and 58 businesses in rural, underserved portions of Andrew, Buchanan, Clinton, Dekalb, Gentry and Nodaway counties in Northwest Missouri. Furthermore, the United fiber network will provide the opportunity for up to 150 critical community anchor institutions, including 21 rural communities, 33 school facilities, 38 health facilities, 31 public safety entities, 5 libraries and 3 prisons to connect. The network spans 1370 miles at a cost of $21.8 million, and United Electric Cooperative seeks a 70% grant, 30% RUS loan for the project.

Through partner Pulse Broadband, United Electric will build a passive optical fiber-to-the-home network on existing electric distribution right-of-way, with planned drops to every home in the network coverage area. Pulse Broadband’s patented, RUS-approved FTTH design is significantly less costly to build and to maintain than similar fiber networks, reducing the cost per premise passed to $4919.  United will utilize existing right-of-ways to eliminate adverse environmental impact.

Services offered over the network will include triple-play bundle options from multiple Internet, video and voice providers as well as home security, video surveillance, distance learning, tele-medicine, and other future end-user applications. Residential service levels will start at $29.99 for internet service and approximately $120 for triple-play video, voice, and data packages, while commercial rates will start at $69.99. The network will also connect critical community anchor institutions and small disadvantaged businesses offering discounted rate packages to these entities at least 25% lower than the proposed base commercial rate packages for a minimum of three years.

This image shows the area that will be serviced through this project.

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