USDA official praises Decorah's fiber optic broadband effort

The USDA has awarded the City of Decorah a $11,500 grant to help fund a feasibility study of a fiber-optic broadband infrastructure within Decorah.

The State of Iowa's director of the USDA Rural Development program, Bill Menner, tells decorahnews.com the Decorah effort "is an exciting project."  Menner says one of the top topics he hears rural Iowans discuss is the need for access to high speed broadband in rural areas.  "Analyzing a community's need (for fast broadband) is a great idea," he says.

Menner says the grant to fund a study of broadband access is the first of its kind in the seven years he's been state director.  The USDA Rural Development Program "is a really flexible program," he says, and is aimed at economic development in rural areas.  Applications are judged based on a point scale.  Since this was the City of Decorah's first such application, it received additional points.

A City of Decorah board has begun meeting and is discussing whether to hire a consultant to do a feasibility study of a high-speed communications utility in Decorah.  The $11,500 grant from the USDA will be considered part of the donation by Decorah Fast Fiber of up to $30,000 towards the cost of the feasibility study, if one is done.

(Disclosure: decorahnews.com's Paul Scott, who wrote this story, is a member of the Decorah Fast Fiber board)