Eleven grants, ranging from $41,914 to more than $286,000, have been approved by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to expand broadband service in areas that have few or no wired connections.
The largest grant, $286,165, went to Wisconsin Independent Network LLC, in Chippewa County, followed by $249,093 to ChoiceTel LLC for broadband expansion in the Town of Land O' Lakes.
The Chippewa County project includes the installation of 5.4 miles of fiber-optic cable to complete a system that runs through the city of Chippewa Falls, under a river and connecting two business parks.
Chippewa County and Internet provider Wisconsin Independent Network will each contribute $130,000 toward the cost of the project.
"Whether there is existing broadband service in the project area is a disputed point. The (grant) application states that a major objective of this project is to extend fiber broadband service to the two business parks," the Public Service Commission said in a memorandum.
Businesses often say that high-speed Internet service is essential to their operations, much like a good highway system.
"The president and CEO of the Chippewa County Economic Development Corp. states that several companies have turned down the industrial parks as an expansion location due to the lack of broadband connectivity," the PSC noted.
The Land O'Lakes project includes 18 miles of fiber-optic cable along rural roads in the towns of Conover and Land O' Lakes, in Vilas County.
The broadband provider, ChoiceTel, will run fiber cable past 59 businesses and 250 residences in Land O'Lakes, according to the PSC.
Land O'Lakes will contribute $249,093 in matching funds.
ChoiceTel, based in Eagle River, says it plans to start installing the cable in the spring and have it ready for customers a year from now.
"We have been doing this for eight years, but nothing ever this big," said ChoiceTel owner Ted Bogeman.
This is the third year the PSC has awarded broadband expansion grants. In fiscal-year 2014 the agency approved $500,000 in grants for seven applicants, and in fiscal-year 2015 it awarded $452,579 to seven applicants.
Without government assistance, broadband providers say, they couldn't afford to extend the service to sparsely populated areas because there aren't enough customers to justify the cost.
For 2016, the PSC received 28 broadband expansion grant applications requesting a total of $4.4 million.
The applications were evaluated by a four-member screening panel that considered the eligibility and merit of each project. The final decisions were made by the agency's commissioners appointed by Gov. Scott Walker.
This year's applications were different from past years in that 19 of the 28 proposals pledged matching funds of 50% or better, according to the PSC.
In the Chippewa County project, where the county pledged $130,000, it's "a substantial investment that likely mirrors the needs of residents in terms of broadband availability and access," the agency noted.
Eleven of the 28 applications were from public-private partnerships, such as ChoiceTel and Land O' Lakes.
"Some of these partnerships do little more than establish program eligibility for the application. Others are more substantial," the PSC wrote.
The screening panel found that all 28 applicants proposed to build in project areas that were either unserved by broadband or under served.
In general, broadband is a high-speed Internet connection capable of handling large amounts of data through fiber-optic cable or other means. The PSC defined broadband as two-way data transmission with speeds of at least 25 megabits per second for downloads and 3 megabits per second for uploads.
A meaningful comparison of projects that have different goals, and that deploy different technologies, is difficult to do, the PSC said.
Several telecoms opposed grant applications, saying the expansions would overlap in areas where they provided broadband service.
But in at least one case, the PSC noted that a telecom had left a community where it previously offered broadband.
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