Residents of rural Prentiss, Mississippi will get high speed broadband access with new fiber project

Windstream is laying fiber in a remote section of Mississippi thanks to a federal grant by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The U.S. Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service reviews the competitive bids to provide broadband access to the rural parts of the country.  So far, Windstream has won $181.3 million in federal grants for various rural areas in thirteen states.

The grants cover three quarters of the cost and Windstream is investing $60.4 million of its own money to complete the projects.

In Prentiss, just under eight miles of fiber optic cable will be installed to provide around 170 remote households with 6 Mbps or greater broadband access.  The total cost of this project is $555,055 and includes fiber and equipment in addition to all the installation.

This works out to a little under $3,300 per household.  Without the federal grant it is doubtful that the residents of this rural area could have afforded to pay such an amount for broadband access.

A manager for Windstream, Terry Mathis, was quoted as saying “This is an exciting day for Windstream and our customers in the Prentiss area.  Windstream had already built out our broadband network to every area that we could serve in a cost-effective way, and now for the first time we will be able to reach customers in some of the most rural parts of our community.”

The residents will be able to use the new broadband service sometime in early August after construction is completed at the end of July.

Check out these high speed Internet Mississippi deals, if you’re from the state.