Milam County commissioners voted to apply for a grant to bring fiber optic cable for better internet speed to the county at a special meeting in the courthouse June 21.
The commission will seek bids for a partner in the venture to improve cable service, as that is a stipulation of the grant application.
While the judge cannot know who might bid to join the county in providing the fiber optic cable, he mentioned Bartlett Electrical Communications and Zochnet as two possibilities.
The grant has priorities that the county must meet in order to be successful in attaining the funds.
Those include designing a service that would be available to the greatest number of households, prioritizes areas that are predominately rural and seeks projects that are designed to evolve for the future.
Judge Steve Young said he feels the county meets all those stipulations plus this National Telecom munications & Information Administration grant prioritizes counties with populations of less than 50,000 people.
Should the county get the grant, the plan would be to run fiber to all the towns in the county.
The project that the county is putting together would cost around $7 million, the judge estimated.
The projected cost would be $4 million for Rockdale and Cameron which comprise 48% of the county households.
The remaining $3 million would be for the 25% of the households in Buckholts, Gause, Milano and Thorndale.
The grant application deadline is Aug. 17 and the county should hear from NTIA sometime in December, the judge said.
“This will provide speeds of 100 Mbps download and 25 Mbps upload,” he said.
Those numbers are much higher than what is now available in the county.
The county will also use $100,000 in funds already in the bank from the American Rescue Plan to pay for a broadband assessment by ConnectNation.
The assessment will determine the speed of service at thousands of locations within the county.
Running fiber optic throughout the county for this service will also improve the coverage and connectivity for those outside the cities. Many fixedpoint wireless towers in the county operate without a fiber optic (hardwire) connection. More fiber optics in the county will allow many of the towers to be connected directly to the fiber and thus provide stronger signals, the judge said in a news release.
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