Company Looks for Grant to Expand Broadband in County

A fiber optic network company is looking for a federal grant to expands its network across the commonwealth, which would have a significant impact on folks in Centre County who lack high-speed internet access.

FirstLight, which owns 1,800 miles of fiber optic network that connects the colleges in the state system of higher education, asked Centre County for a letter of support as it applies for a Middle Mile grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The grant would help the company provide more broadband capacity to the network.

“Centre County is in the hub (of the network that FirstLight owns). … Everything on the network branches out (from Centre County),” said county Assistant Director of Planning Elizabeth Lose while explaining the project to commissioners during a meeting on Tuesday.

The grant would help expand the network across the state, including inside Centre County’s borders, especially on the eastern side, said Lose.

“What is particularly important about this, if the grant were to be awarded, they are looking to increase capacity. They need to get more bandwidth within the existing network. The theory is that in order to build out a network, they have to almost start to build up to guarantee that as we build out there is going be enough existing capacity bandwidth in these networks,” said Lose.

“This is significant for Centre County because it would open the opportunity for additional companies to come and make these inter-connections.”

As part of the Broadband Strategic Plan, Centre County has long talked about the need to “get out to these unserved and underserved areas,” said Lose. “FirstLight had the foresight to say, ‘We need to really concentrate a little bit on the networks we had at hand to bulk that capacity up.’”

It is unclear how much federal funding FirstLight is seeking from the grant, but with the scope of the work, company representatives said it would be significant.

Lose said that data from the Federal Communications Commission shows the eastern, southern portion of Centre County is extremely underserved with broadband.

Commissioner Mark Higgins said it was “wonderful to hear that (FirstLight) would potentially concentrate on expanding the fiber backbone in the eastern part of Centre County because we are seeing a lot of new customers in rural areas that take up the broadband.”

He added that the commissioners would continue to support rural broadband development. All three commissioners agreed to approve and sign the letter of support.