KEWAUNEE – During its Jan. 14 meeting, the Kewaunee County Board of Supervisors approved a BEAD — broadband, equity, access and deployment — endorsement with Bertram Communications.
Bertram is interested in providing a full build-out of fiberoptics to BEAD-eligible locations in Kewaunee County.
County Administrator Jeremy Kral said that BEAD is “a federal, nationwide program that will entail an investment of $42 billion across the country. It's overseen by, in Wisconsin, the Public Service Commission, and nationally at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
“Its goals are to provide affordable, reliable, high-speed internet to all Americans, prioritizing underserved and unserved areas, which is part of the reason why Kewaunee county actually did really well in the assessment or need portion of it.
“The funding is distributed through states and territories based on their unserved and underserved locations, and the states are responsible for the administration of the sub-grants. So the Feds allocate money out to the state, the state then allocates money as it sees fit within its borders.
“As far as Wisconsin is concerned, Wisconsin submitted a number of addresses for bead eligibility to the federal government, and over 4,000 addresses in Kewaunee County are eligible. So if you think about our population being approximately 20,000 people, having 4000 addresses marked as unserved or underserved is actually really favorable for us.
“So, in order to be eligible for the program to participate and write for the grant, a provider had to send in their information to the state indicating that they wanted to apply for grant funding to provide the bead program, and the state had to issue approvals on those subsequent to that.”
Kral said that the county talked to four different providers before bringing Bertram forward in a resolution.
“One of the reasons for getting so involved with this is because it is a private grant for private companies. One of the reasons to get so involved is because, of course, the value of impact of internet services in our county to be able to provide stronger Internet services for thousands and thousands of people,” Kral added.
“As far as explaining the county's process and some of the factors that caused us to get to this point, the grants are due to the state by Feb. 25 and when you back that up, that means that now is probably the best time to be able to issue this endorsement and later would be problematic. Providers are currently in the process of writing, very large, complicated grant proposals to the state. And so, them having certainty on county endorsement is very helpful…”
The board voted 17-0 to approve the endorsement.
Kral said the soonest that work could begin on the fiberoptics is early to mid-2026.
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