$1.2M broadband grant approved for Lakewood

A project serving businesses and residents of the Town of Lakewood is among the latest to benefit from grants approved to improve internet access to rural Wisconsin communities.

The state Public Service Commission on June 23 approved a $1.279 million broadband expansion grant to the Oconto County Economic Development Corp. in the second round of grants announced in 2022.

County and private dollars totaling $472,926 will be used as matching funds. According to the grant application, matches include $250,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds from Oconto County, $182,296 from NSight and $40,000 from the Town of Lakewood.

The PSC said the project will utilize a Fiber to the Premise service to reach 55 business and 201 residential locations in the Town of Lakewood.

The NSight Telservices partnership is designed to build a network to deliver download speeds between 250 Mbps and 1 Gbps per subscriber and upload speeds between 20 Mbps and 100 Mbps, according to the grant application.

A second, smaller application for Airport Road in the towns of Stiles and Oconto apparently was not approved in this latest round of grants.

Meanwhile, the contract for a multiple-county project led by Bug Tussel Wireless and Fond du Lac County was not brought to the Oconto County Board as predicted at the May meeting.

“I want to assure everybody, everything is on track,” County Administrator Erik Pritzl told the board during its June 23 meeting. “There are a number of counties involved in that final resolution — not only us but also Rock, Clark, Iowa, Jefferson, Taylor and Wood. So now we have to get all those final resolutions moving forward at the same time.”

It now appears the resolution will be on the board’s July 21 agenda, Pritzl said.

Bug Tussel has been working for a decade on a $240 million project to bring the internet to rural parts of the state.

Fond du Lac County, which initiated the effort in 2012, would issue conduit bonds for Bug Tussel to acquire, build and install towers and other telecommunications infrastructure. Oconto County’s portion of the project is estimated at $16.5 million.