By 2028, almost every home in Nebraska should have broadband

LINCOLN — Nebraska is on track to achieve a goal that once seemed impossible — connecting virtually every home, no matter how rural, to high-speed broadband by the end of 2028.

That’s what the Legislative Committee on Transportation and Telecommunications was told Friday during a hearing on an interim study to monitor the state of broadband rollout in the state.

DeBoer

“It seems like a fairy tale because at one point it was,” said state Sen. Wendy DeBoer of Bennington, who introduced the resolution on the study. “I never thought we would go so far, so fast. We never thought we would be able to raise this money.”

However, speakers pointed to signs of progress in expanding broadband across the state.

Patrick Haggerty, head of the Nebraska Broadband Office, said the state has completed identifying areas and homes that lack broadband service or are slower than state standards. He said his office checked 94,193 locations during this study.

Now the state has begun the process of seeking offers and selecting entities that will receive awards for expanding broadband connections in these areas.

Haggerty said the timeline is for awards to be made by April and the next step will be to start construction. He acknowledged that the timeline is “really ambitious” and depends on timely approval from federal officials.

“I think we can handle it,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work to get there.”

The State Broadband Office oversees Nebraska’s implementation of the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. Among other things, the program provides money for states to expand broadband in areas where it is not available or is too slow.

Nebraska received $405.3 million from the program, part of the $42.45 billion authorized by Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.

Haggerty said the BEAD money, along with other federal and state broadband dollars, should be enough to cover all remaining broadband expansion needs.

These remaining dollars include nearly $88 million in federal Covid-19 recovery funds for broadband expansion projects. The smaller pots include $20 million annually in state funds and allocations from the Nebraska Universal Service Fund. The NUSF comes from assessments incriminating telecommunications companies.

Several projects supported by these three funding sources are already underway and some have already been completed, said Cullen Robbins of the Nebraska Public Service Commission. The Commission supervises these three funds.

Ron Cone, director of information services for Educational Services Unit 10 in Kearney, noted progress in providing broadband to Nebraska schools. Five years ago, 22 school buildings lacked high-speed broadband, he said.

Currently, all but five are reachable via fiber broadband. Four of the others are connected by alternative means, such as through wireless service providers. Only Cutcomb Lake School, located 93 miles from the Valentine district office, has no connection.

Tip O’Neill, a lobbyist representing the Nebraska Telecommunications Association, said the federal funding provided Nebraska with a “first in a generation” opportunity to connect Nebraskans and boost the state’s economy. However, he also said that the state would have to look at repairing, maintaining and ultimately modernizing the connections under construction.

“We can’t build networks and then ignore them,” he said.

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