Middle Mile Connectivity: Grants are available to help fund your project.

Providing connectivity to users is costly and consumes valuable time and resources that could be used for other endeavors, especially finding, and writing grants. Infinity can assist you with your search, and your response to grants that are designed to help you provide these services to users.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is currently offering three grant opportunities for middle mile and last mile connectivity. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program initially will appropriate $100 million for each state and $100 million to be equally divided amount the US territories. This money is specifically earmarked to support planning efforts for building capacity, outreach, and coordination with local communities. The fund requires a 5-year action plan that should be created with collaboration with local and regional entities.

Any remaining funding will be distributed based on needs, mapping, and number of unserved areas, with funding being prioritized by to unserved areas (those with broadband speeds under 25/3 Mbps) and followed by those underserved areas (those with broadband speeds under 100/20 Mbps) and then serving community anchor institutions.

The NTIA is also utilizing the Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Grant that can be used by States, Tribal governments, utility companies, public entities, non-profits, and other groups to provide middle mile connectivity. The fund establishes $1 billion for construction, improvement, or acquisition of middle mile infrastructure. The goal of this fund is to reduce the cost of middle mile infrastructure to unserved and underserved areas.

Additionally, the NTIA has established the Digital Equity Act which dedicates $2.75 billion and creates three grant programs to promote digital inclusion and equity. The three programs are:

• State Digital Equity Planning Grant Program: $60 million grant for states and territories to develop digital equity plans.
• State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program: $1.44 billion grant for states and territories to implement digital equity projects and support their plans. Grants will be paid out over 5 years.
• Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program: $1.25 billion discretionary grant to implement equity projects. Distributed over 5 years.

Time is important when gathering information to create a grant proposal, let Infinity help you with gathering the vital information, and creating your grant proposal. Our staff has more than 10 years of grant writing experience and a 100% award record. Let us help you prepare your grant and find the funding to help provide middle mile connectivity.