Your home may be near one of our new build areas, but you are wondering why we’re not building to your address at this time. The reason is the grant funding areas must be completed within two years.
As I wrote back in October 2020, we submitted grant applications for nearly every eligible grant funding area inour electric service area. Several of our applications were challenged by other providers claiming that broadband service is already available or funding to build broadband was already awarded to another provider.
We fought on your behalf and were able to disprove several of these challenges. You can see a map of our grant application results at tipmont.org/grantmap.
We’re getting to you faster
The grant funding we’ve received is helping you get service faster. When we started in spring 2019, we planned on eight years to complete the build to our electric service area. The grant funding and our acquisition of Wintek has sharply reduced that timeline. We now expect the build to our electric service area to be complete by the end of 2024.
What this means for you is that we’ll ultimately deliver our fiber internet service to you sooner than we would have otherwise. The grant funding allows us to hire more crews and build faster. Learn more at tipmont.org/fightingforyou.
What you can do
Indiana’s Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA), which administers Indiana’s Next Level Connections broadband grant program, has a survey you can take to describe your need. The survey is available at surveymonkey.com/r/ indianabroadband. You may want to also contact your local, state, and federal representatives and let them know you need better internet connectivity. Finally, if you live in an area that received federal funding, please contact that provider and ask why they are not yet providing service where they claim to have received funding.
Welcoming a new board member
Finally, I’m pleased to share that Wesley Stockdale has been appointed to Tipmont’s board of directors, replacing the late Jerry Peevler. Stockdale will represent Tipmont’s sixth district.
2021 Annual Meeting date set
Tipmont’s 2021 Annual Meeting is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 18, at the newly remodeled Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds. Please stay tuned to future editions of Indiana Connection for more details.
