That’s thanks to a $16 million loan announced this week from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Office.
Groton-based James Valley has been tapping the loans for a decade now, said CEO James Groft.
“Every five to 10 years, you kind of go back in and apply for more loans,” he said by phone Tuesday. “It’s an ongoing operation.”
The loan will be used to do "cyber home construction" — like installing fiber optic lines — in the smaller communities that James Valley serves, Groft said.
“The biggest thing is internet speed,” he said. “We’ll be making fiber optic lines available to every home … it will enhance internet speeds, make any speed of internet available to those customers. It also just improves the service for cable TV and phones.”
The loan is part of USDA’s plan to invest more than $200 million in infrastructure projects to get broadband to unserved and underserved rural communities, according to a news release from the agency.
“There are no (service) problems, nobody that’s lacking anything,” Groft said. “It’s getting ready for the next generation of internet speeds.”
Some of the work is already done, he noted in an email. The remainder has to be finished by 2020.
The loan was not unexpected, Groft said.
©2017 the American News (Aberdeen, S.D.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
