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NY State Grants $9M For Upstate Broadband Projects

Posted by samzenpus on from the have-some-internet dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to a news report, New York State is giving about $9 million in grants to give broadband connection to 33,000 households and 4,500 businesses in rural areas of the state. This works out to $240 per connection. This second round of grants by Empire State Development is part of a Cuomo administration program to reach more than 500,000 residents with no high-speed Internet access, many in rural areas."

3 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Northern New York Broadband by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a resident of North Lawrence, NY (about 15 minutes from Massena and the Canadian border) these grants have been a lifeline to the north country. Most of us have had to use dial up or pay Verizon $60 a month for 5Gbs of spotty service from a 4G hotspot. This next batch of grants will bring a 100mb fiber connection to my house for $80 a month. I'm generally not big on government spending, but we just had our first real data center put in. The nearest one being almost one-hundred fifty miles south. This is bringing a boon to the local economy, as a number of call centers are looking to move into the region because of cheap power (Massena Electric) and the availability of broadband to run VoIP call center systems.

    1. Re:Northern New York Broadband by wiredlogic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As a former Resident of Rochester you should be so lucky. Try living 1 mile from a Frontier CO and only be able to get 2Mbps down. NYs upstate cities could use some broadband funding too.

      --
      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
  2. Re:The Onion by ebno-10db · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is not like they ever take Upstate seriously.

    Cry me a river. NYC sends $4.1B more to Albany than they get back. The NYC suburbs (Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland & Westchester) send $7.9B more to Albany than they get back, yet the upstate "we're getting screwed" refrain never ends. How much more of a subsidy do you want?