TDS Telecom (NYSE: TDS) has begun building two more of its American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) broadband stimulus projects in Kentucky and Mississippi, bringing broadband services to nearly 1,200 users.
Delivered via TDS subsidiary Southeast Mississippi Telephone Company, the project around Leaksville, Miss. will bring broadband services to about 600 customers by the end of the year. Construction partner MasTec North America, Inc., will complete outside work, while TDS will complete inside work.
Serving about 550 customers around the Salem, Ky., area, TDS subsidiary Salem Telephone Company will also begin delivering services to customers by the end of 2013. For the Kentucky project TDS hired CCI Systems, Inc., which will complete outside work, and TDS will complete inside work.
The service provider received a total of 44 ARRA grants to extend broadband service to residential and business customers in 20 states. In addition to Kentucky and Mississippi, the provider has invited telecom contractors to bid on broadband stimulus projects in four other states including Colorado, Idaho, Tennessee and Washington.
Cindy Tomlinson, a spokeswoman for TDS Telecom, told FierceTelecom in a previous interview that "construction is underway on 37 of the 44 projects TDS received ARRA funding for," adding that they "expect to turn up services in nearly all of the remaining markets throughout 2013."
For more:
- see the release
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