NTIA Announces Broadband Funding Webinar Series

The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) has announced the dates for a series of webinars to assist potential applicants to its new Broadband Infrastructure Program. The series will run over two days each month for the next four months. Each session begins at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time.:

The $300 million Broadband Infrastructure Program is one of several funding initiatives Congress has enacted in recent months to improve rural connectivity. NTIA will award grants for states to build broadband networks with minimum speeds of 100 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream, a significant increase over the minimum speeds of past federal broadband programs.

NTIA will award the grants directly to states or to counties and municipalities designated by the states. However, the legislation specifically encourages public entities to build in partnership with private ISPs. The webinars will provide information to help potential applicants understand the program’s rules and prepare applications for grants.

In addition to the infrastructure program, NTIA also is administering new programs for Tribal Broadband Connectivity and Connecting Minority Communities. It has announced webinar dates for those programs as well. Webinar registration is now open for all dates for all three programs.