About 19000 Idahoans to soon get high-speed Internet | Business ...

A new $5.7 million project will give high-speed, broadband Internet access to about 19,000 Idahoans in rural areas, the Federal Communications Commission said.

More than 41 percent of Idaho's rural population ? or about 194,000 people ? don't have access to high-speed Internet. Idaho has the nation's seventh-lowest rate of rural broadband availability, the FCC said in a release.

Frontier Communications Corp. and CenturyLink Inc. will use the $5.7 million to quickly deploy Internet access to unserved customers in 7,300 locations in Idaho, the FCC said. The companies must finish two-thirds of the project within two years and be finished in three years.

The Connect America project in Idaho is part of a national public-private partnership to provide access to 19 million rural Americans by 2020. The program's first phase will provide more than $100 million in public funding, matched by tens of millions of dollars in private funding for projects in 36 states, the FCC said.

Idaho's broadband availability is the worst in Camas, Clark and Teton counties, where the FCC found nobody has access to high-speed Internet.

Ada, Canyon, Gem and Minidoka counties have the highest per-capita access to high-speed Internet, the FCC said.

Source: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/07/26/2203251/about-19000-idahoans-to-soon-get.html

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