By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
Local leaders in northwest Missouri are working with the state and a local fiber-optic network to try and improve rural broadband access in areas that need it most.
Buchanan County presiding commissioner Lee Sawyer says the county is trying to decide how to best use its dollars toward this project, using American Rescue Plan funding and other means.
"We're trying to figure out how to maximize the dollars we have as matching money," Sawyer said on KFEQ's The Hotline. "All of the state money that we'll be applying for on the rural fiber side will be requiring a local match."
Sawyer says they remain in constant contact with United Fiber - a Savannah-based fiber-optic network that provides high speed broadband services to many different communities and rural areas in the northwest part of the state.
"We're talking with United Fiber and we remain very impressed with those folks," Sawyer said. "They've got a good plan. Everyone is kind of redoing their maps, because they've changed the rules a little bit on what is considered to be inadequate internet connectivity."
Buchanan County commissioners are setting aside around $2 million from the American Rescue Plan that will go toward rural broadband improvement. Gov. Mike Parson has previously recommended around $400 million in state funding to go toward this effort.
Sawyer says any state funds that Buchanan County applies for that's put toward rural broadband would have to be matched locally. That way, Missouri could get some federal help on this project as well.
"Let's just say we could do a public-private partnership for our local match," Sawyer said. "So, maybe we put in money, United Fiber puts in money and then we take that and give that to the state. Well, then the state might say 'you need to have a 25% local match' or maybe it's a 50% local match. We're hoping for 25, because that would enable us to expand further."
Missouri ranks 34th out of all states in rural broadband access, according to research from BroadbandNow. Their research shows 83.5% of Missouri residents have access to wired broadband with download speeds of 100 megabytes per second and upload speeds of 25 MBPS or higher.
Sawyer says plans are still being developed, and broadband coverage maps are being updated by state and local leaders, and exact planning is still being hammered out.
The overall cost of broadband expansion, coupled with issues in getting the needed materials due to recent supply chain backlog, have caused delays in rural broadband and fiber broadband expansion.
Still, Sawyer says the top priority is finding those rural areas that are most populated and are not getting the type of internet speed needed for tasks such as working from home, home health, virtual learning and other school work that requires reliable internet connection.
"We'll be looking at the underserved areas with the highest population and we'll go from there," Sawyer said. "We'd love nothing more than to build out Buchanan County. I don't know if that's realistic on this particular round, but we're going to try and get as much as we possibly can (from the state)."
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