Cooperatives Playing Major Role In Arkansas’ ARPA-Fueled Fiber Expansion
The Arkansas State Broadband Office continues to leverage American Rescue Plan Act funds to drive affordable fiber in the Natural State.
The Arkansas State Broadband Office – ARConnect – continues to leverage American Rescue Plan Act funds to drive affordable fiber access into underserved parts of the Natural State.
State Broadband
Three funding rounds are winding their way to completion, as fiber connectivity is being made available to rural markets for the first time, with a heavy reliance on local cooperatives.
ARConnect officials say they’ve now awarded more than $534 million in grants that will expand access to 130,000 locations in total, with most of the projects completed by 2030. Including matching funds, $1 billion is expected to be invested in total, bringing notable improvements to an estimated 875,000 Arkansas residents.
The Arkansas ARC Grant Program began in February 2021, using federal Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Program funding propped up by ARPA, which both Republican Arkansas state senators voted against.
As of last December, state officials have committed all but $4,832 of its $1.57 billion in ARPA funds to active projects in the state.
ARC Round 1 doled out $118 million in grants to 76 projects, expanding access to approximately 55,700 homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions.
ARC Round 2 awarded $274.4 million in grants to 87 different projects, impacting approximately 54,000 homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions.
More recently, ARC Round 3 awarded $126.4 million in grants to 19 projects to reach over 17,000 homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions.
Cooperatives fairly well represented in grant awards
While regional telecom monopolies saw their fair share of awards, smaller telecoms and cooperatives have been well represented in the state’s grant awards.
For example Clay County Connect, a wholly owned subsidiary of Clay County Electric Cooperative Corporation, received $8.8 million in the first round of grants.
That money was to fund projects in Clay and Randolph counties.
Clay County Connect also saw $5.7 million in grant awards during the second round for projects in Randolph and Greene counties.
The Ashley-Chicot-Union Electric Cooperative received $6.8 million in second round grants for projects across Chicot, Union, and Ashley counties. The Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative ISP Wave Rural Connect received $4.5 million in second round grants for projects in Charlston and Crawford counties, as well as $23 million in third-round grants for deployments in Logan county.
The First Electric Cooperative broadband subsidiary Connect2First (which we profiled in 2023) nabbed a $10.9 million third round grant for a deployment project in Lonoke county.
Southwest Arkansas Electric Cooperative’s Four States Fiber was awarded an $11 million third-round grant to deploy fiber in Montgomery county.
While the South Central Arkansas Electric Cooperative subsidiary South Central Connect received a companion $8.7 million grant to finish the job in Montgomery county.
Elsewhere, Petit Jean Electric Cooperative Corp received a $6.1 million third-round grant for fiber deployments in rural Searcy county, while Woodruff Electric Cooperative’s Enlightened nabbed a $9.6 million third round grant for ongoing deployments in St. Francis county.
Arkansas cooperatives were aided by the state’s 2021 repeal of a restrictive state law – ghost written by the telecom lobby – greatly hampering the deployment of community owned and operated broadband networks in the state. Recent ILSR data indicates that 16 states still have laws restricting the creation, financing, or expansion of community-run broadband networks.
Arkansas municipalities like Clarksville and Conway led the way in demonstrating the direct local benefits of municipal broadband initiatives, which helped make the case for the reversal of the state’s counterproductive law after years of local grassroots activism.
NRECA, a coalition representing U.S. electric cooperatives, notes that 15 Arkansas co-ops with broadband subsidiaries recently passed a major milestone: the delivery of fiber access to 1.4 million Arkansas residents in the last seven years.
“No longer does a person have to live in a metropolitan area to have access to lightning-fast Internet service,” Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp CEO Vernon Hasten said of the deployment milestone. “No longer do young people have to leave their communities to work for a national or international company. The locally controlled cooperatives exist to improve the quality of life of the residents in their communities.”
NRECA data indicates that 41,000 miles of fiber have been deployed, connecting more than 170,000 subscribers and giving 72 of 75 counties in Arkansas access to co-op broadband. Though ARPA and BEAD are clearly changing the equation, 80 percent of the state cooperatives’ investment in fiber infrastructure has been self-funded without grant subsidies.
Historic progress in broadband expansion with BEAD still waiting in the wings
Many of these communities have never had high-speed Internet access due to the cost-constraints of deploying fiber to rocky, rural areas. Locals are thrilled to be receiving fiber broadband at next-generation speeds at prices considerably lower than what’s seen in many more urban markets.
"Money,” Rally Networks Operation manager Bruce Grubb told one local outlet when asked why it took so long. “It's the same reason we don't have a Walmart here in Cleveland County. It's $75,000 a mile now to put this fiber in the ground. That's your engineering cost and then you've got to have permits, easements, right-of-ways. It's a lot that goes into it.”
Arkansas is still expected to receive $1 billion in additional broadband grant money courtesy of the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, made possible by the 2021 infrastructure bill, which both Republican state Senators, like ARPA, also voted against.
According to the Arkansas State Broadband Office, 814 applications for BEAD grants were submitted during the first wave of funding, with 96 percent of those bids classified as competitive.
A total of 48 different providers participated in the grant bidding process, including 29 in-state providers and 19 out-of-state ISPs.
“This hyper-transparent approach led to Arkansas having one of the most robust opening BEAD rounds in the nation,” Arkansas State Broadband Office Director Glen Howie recently told Broadband Breakfast. “We will continue to maintain very close contact with the ISP community over the next couple of weeks prior to the launch of Tranche-2, providing answers to questions and offering continuous technical assistance.”
A second round of bidding for Arkansas’ slice of BEAD funding was slated to have begun on February 13. At which point Arkansas leaders can get to work hopefully filling in deployments that ARPA has yet to reach.
This article was published by the Community Broadband Networks Initiative of the Institute for Local Self Reliance on CommunityNets March 6, 2025, and is reprinted with permission.
