More than 1,700 homes in Cape Girardeau County — as well as farms, businesses and the public school systems in Cape Girardeau and Jackson — will benefit from a $2.9 million grant for broadband internet expansion announced Wednesday by the federal government.

The grant is being awarded to Big River Communications of Cape Girardeau as part of a $100 million broadband expansion project through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and made available to the USDA’s ReConnect Program out of the government’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

“The need for rural broadband has never been more apparent than it is now, as our nation manages the coronavirus national emergency,” according to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue, who announced the grant during an online video news conference.

“Expanding access to this critical infrastructure will help ensure rural America prospers for years to come,” he said.

Purdue was joined in the presentation by U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, Missouri Department of Agriculture director Chris Chinn, USDA rural utility services administrator Chad Rupe, and Kevin Cantwell, president of Big River Communications.

“The future of broadband is not about getting email faster,” Cantwell said. “It really is about economic development, eliminating the digital divide, improving telemedicine and creating new opportunities for everyone in areas that have been left behind when it came to getting broadband.”

Blunt said high-speed broadband connectivity is as important today as telephone connections were a century ago.

The project will entail installation of approximately 53 miles of high-speed fiber optic cables, about 75% of which will be underground, in and around Jackson, as well as in northern sections of Cape Girardeau.

According to the USDA, the project will benefit approximately 4,839 Cape Girardeau County residents with “fiber-to-the-premises” service, based on U.S. Census Bureau data.

“Our project, utilizing this grant and our private investment, will deliver high-speed internet to unserved areas inside the cities of Cape Girardeau and Jackson and then other communities throughout Southeast Missouri,” Cantwell said. Internet connectivity speeds using fiber optic lines, he said, are anywhere from 10 to 100 times faster than traditional internet connections.

“Fiber optic is a game changer,” Cantwell added. “This will allow our citizens, our peers, to compete globally.”

Much of the preliminary engineering work for the project has already taken place as well as coordination with local officials and school district administrators in Cape Girardeau and Jackson.

Cantwell said Big River’s goal “is to turn dirt by the end of September” with the first connections made by the end of the year. The entire project, he said, will take about a year to complete.

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