U.S Senators Jay Rockefeller, Joe Manchin, and Congressman Nick Rahall recently announced a multi-million dollar federal award to help expand broadband infrastructure and high-speed internet access to at least 40,000 rural homes and businesses in West Virginia.
The state was allocated $24,106,000 after Senator Rockefeller called the FCC to advocate that the agency should continue to release resources from the FCC’s Connect America Fund to keep up the construction of broadband in West Virginia.
In addition, the West Virginia Statewide Broadband Infrastructure Project received Federal funding of $126, 323,296. The state is planning to use the funding to bring high-speed internet access to underserved regions by expanding the state’s existing microwave public safety network and add 2,300 miles of fiber.
The expanded statewide network expects to directly connect more than 1,000 anchor institutions, including critical community facilities. This will mean that access to healthcare and broadband will enable video applications for emergency first responders to be expanded. There are plans to upgrade internet access significantly at 184 telemedicine sites.
In effort to address public safety, funding is available for the national public safety broadband network to be built by FirstNet, an independent authority within NTIA. The project awarded $116 million in funding to 54 states to address public safety through NTIA’s State and Local Implementation Grant Program (SLIP).
The funding is going to support states and territories with their planning, consulting, and outreach activities as they work with FirstNet on deployment of the public safety broadband network. West Virginia will use $1,402,000 in funds to update its Statewide Communication Interoperability Plan as part of SLIP and provide education and outreach to local jurisdictions.
Since April, FirstNet has issued multiple Requests for Information (RFI). The objective in releasing the RFIs is to solicit information from all interested parties and to further develop the network plan. It was announced at the FirstNet Board meeting that 17 RFIs were going to be released in the future to provide information on how to broaden FirstNet’s market research efforts.
FirstNet released the RFIs so that information would be available on a wide range of wireless broadband network platforms, systems, equipment, software, services, applications, support systems, and other components.
Last June 2013, FirstNet received numerous responses to their first RFI on mobile devices. In July, First Net released ten of the remaining 16 RFIs. FirstNet’s RFIs is the first step in a process that will enable the organization to issue future Requests for Proposals related to FirstNet’s network architecture.