By Kathy Bolten | Business Record senior reporter High-speed internet access will be provided to every West Des Moines residence and business through an ambitious plan unveiled last week by city officials and Google Fiber, a provider of fiber-optic broadband internet service. Under a development agreement approved this week by…
Iowa has received $26.2 million in federal relief to fund broadband access for students, the Iowa Department of Education announced this week. Iowa’s grant is part of the nearly $3 billion Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The Iowa…
A bill co-authored by U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack of Iowa designed to improve the accuracy of the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband availability maps in rural areas has passed the U.S. House and now heads to the Senate, reports the Corridor Business Journal. H.R. 4229, the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological…
Microsoft Corp. and Nextlink Internet are partnering to expand the Microsoft Airband Initiative, the Microsoft program dedicated to closing the broadband internet accessibility gap by investing in rural internet access infrastructure. Microsoft’s partnership with Nextlink will expand Nextlink’s existing deployments in Texas and Oklahoma, and begin new deployments in Iowa,…
When Shelley McKinley visited the Iowa State Fair this year, she made sure to swing by the food vendors. “It was awesome. I loved it. I got a big huge bucket of those cookies to take home with me,” McKinley said, laughing. Home for McKinley is Redmond, Wash., where she…
Iowans launch network to connect providers, communities seeking better service Recall the last year your home had dial-up internet service, the once great, shining beacon of communication in America. As you nudged your modem awake, a sound that an Economist writer once described in 2007 as “the distorted screams of…
City by city, the first few tons of 5G wireless internet equipment is being installed — and protested, as CityLab reports. 5G networks have only just begun to spread — a few providers, including AT&T and Verizon, have started going live in a handful of cities (Verizon announced 5G service will be arriving in…
Iowa applicants applying for the USDA “ReConnect” Grant Program will have an advantage applying for the Governor’s Empower Rural Iowa Initiative, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced this week. The program, announced in December 2018, makes about $600 million in grants and loans available for broadband providers in rural areas that do…
Whoops. Federal Communications Commission chief Ajit Pai admitted that broadband growth numbers announced by the FCC in February were actually inflated by millions, reports Ars Technica. The errors were first published by advocacy group Free Press, which found a new ISP called BarrierFree falsely reported to the FCC that it went from…
A community broadband equity pilot project between the city of West Des Moines, Microsoft Corp., T-Mobile and other partners is entering phase two of the ambitious three-year plan, officials said at a news conference Wednesday. The city now offers free public Wi-Fi, managed by Ovation Network, from the West Des Moines…