Promise of service still being kept
The federal and state governments have promised to bring high-speed internet to all parts of Mississippi, and slowly but surely, that promise is being fulfilled. From BEAM (Office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi), where Sally Doty serves as Director, and manages $1.4 billion in federal funding for broadband infrastructure to expand high-speed internet access across Mississippi, progress is being reported. With many rural areas, the process has been slow and tedious, but BEAM is making progress despite numerous regulations and requirements she has to meet throughout the process. Each area of the state has its own tough conditions but the rural area of the Delta, where populations are spread out so far, new challenges come into the process.
The federal funding for the program was allocated through BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program) and financed by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. Key points of the BEAD program include Mississippi receiving over $1.4 billion in federal funds to build broadband infrastructure. The aim of the program is connecting every community in Mississippi to high-speed internet by funding partnerships to develop new networks and upgrade existing ones. To manage the federal funds, the BEAM office oversees the BEAD funds, maps unserved and underserved areas, and helps residents with broadband-related issues. Individuals can find grant opportunities and access the application portal via the BEAM website. Additionally, BEAM has set up a challenge process where local governments can collaborate with residents to test and verify existing internet service quality, as detailed on the CMPDD website. Doty and her staff have been busy dotting I’s and crossing T’s to make sure the internet coverage doesn’t “drop out” or get lost in a federal “buffering.”
“Our office has now gone through the award process and we have a provider,” says Doty. “We have gone through the application process for BEAD, which is the largest grant to provide awards and funding for every unserved location in Mississippi. We have chosen the awardees based on their costs, based on the area that they will cover. And we are now in negotiations back and forth with our federal partner, NTIA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. We’ve submitted all needed information to them and we are going back and forth to clean up data issues—and we expect them to push back on some of our costs—but we haven’t gotten to that point yet.”
At press time, she noted that the federal government shutdown has not impacted the project’s progress and with change in administrations from Biden to Trump, there have been revisions to comb through.
“Unfortunately, this is a large federal government program, and it has moved much slower than I would ever have liked it to move, but the Trump administration did speed things up this summer. In June, we received new rules for the program to implement in ninety days, a nine-day window to make all of our awards. It wasn’t ninety days by the time we complied with some rules on the front end and the back end, and we really had a very quick turnaround to get applications in, score them and provide some notifications and different things we needed to do. My office has been extremely busy this summer, as well as all broadband offices around the nation, and that was also difficult—we were all doing this at one time. Our internet service providers were really pushed. We’ve got large providers in Mississippi that are nationwide such as AT&T and then we have some others that are in several different states or in the southeast. Those providers were juggling this really compressed time period in multiple states so it has been a tough summer, but we’re on the other side of it now.”
She explained the final proposal was submitted on September 4th. And now her office is going back and forth with the feds answering additional questions and explaining the data.
“The feds are using this to clean up their data. We’re on the ground, we’re grassroots here, so it’s been interesting as some earlier federal programs perhaps aren’t on the FCC map correctly. We’ve been working through that and making sure everything is shown correctly, because we don’t want to overbuild service. Still, for those areas that do not have service, we certainly want to find them a provider. I don’t have it broken down into the 18 Delta counties, but we did break the state down into project areas, so there is a project area that will encompass those various counties. As far as next steps, we should have this portion of it approved by the first of the year.”
With the projects being such large scale, the project will start in 2026 but may not finish until 2028.
“I want to emphasize that these are the most rural, most remote areas of the state. If these locations were easy to get to, a provider would already have gotten there. They’re sprinkled out, and that’s a high-cost area. It costs more to run fiber to them,” she says.
One solution the federal government is implementing for the more remote areas is using low-earth orbit satellites to run either SpaceX’s Starlink or Amazon’s Kuiper Internet service.
“According to the federal rules of the grant, we were required to accept them as a provider. So, we will be working with Starlink and Kuiper. I’m not exactly sure what that rollout will look like until we get this all approved from the feds,” says Doty. “Let me give you an example. We have three project areas in Bolivar County that still had unserved locations. We have a project by AT&T, TecInfo—a local provider there, and then we have a Kuiper award to locations that are more remote. We’ve used a mix of providers throughout the state.”
With Starlink already rolled out, those projects will take less time but Kuiper is not fully operational as of yet.
“Starlink is a known entity, but I’m looking forward to working with Kuiper. We expect an Amazon product to be good. SpaceX did apply for the whole state as a provider,” she says.
Across the Delta, providers such as C-Spire and Leland-based TecInfo have been on the ground laying fiber to communities and rural areas. And that means there will need to be more workers trained for that work. A grant from Delta Compass will help do just that. In a partnership with Mississippi Delta Community College, Delta Compass will provide $50,000 in aid to students to help them make ends meet while taking the needed fiber classes.
The grant to MDCC’s Capp Center in Indianola will help expand its fiber optic training program, a critical step in preparing the skilled workforce needed to support rural broadband deployment across Washington County and the wider Delta region.
The need was identified by the Washington County Economic Alliance (WCEA) through its USDA-backed programming and focuses on strengthening broadband access in Hollandale, Leland, Stoneville, and Winterville, communities where infrastructure improvements are vital for economic growth, education, and quality of life.
The funds will allow Washington County to deploy more trained technicians into the workforce, ensuring that local residents can meet the rising demand for broadband installation and maintenance in rural areas. By equipping MDCC students with industry-recognized fiber optic skills, Delta Compass and its partners are building both immediate and long-term capacity for the Delta’s digital future.
“This grant supports the kind of hands-on, career-focused training that equips local residents with the skills needed for high-demand jobs in fiber installation and maintenance—skills that are essential as we expand high-speed internet across Mississippi,” says Doty. “Right now, over $150 million in grant-funded broadband projects are under construction across Mississippi, with an additional $500 million in large-scale infrastructure awards being finalized by our office right now. These networks won’t just connect homes and businesses; they’ll create lasting career opportunities for the Mississippians who build and sustain them.”
President & CEO of Delta Compass, Justin Burch explains more of the benefit from this grant.
“Broadband access is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity for education, healthcare, and economic development,” says Burch. “This grant ensures that our region is not only building broadband infrastructure but also investing in the people who will make it possible. By training local residents, we are creating jobs, keeping talent in the Delta, and laying the foundation for inclusive growth.”
Capps Center Executive Director, Doug Freeze, explains the funds will directly help students enrolled in fiber optics classes.
“We will be using it to provide stipends for the students who are currently in the program. This is a two-year grant, so we’ll be able to provide a nominal stipend to participants who are going through the fiber outfeed program for this class and the next three classes,” says Freeze. “They can use the funds to help offset other costs, other barriers that come up along the way, so they may need to use the money for transportation, or they may need to use it to help go towards childcare or other life necessities.”
The fiber optics training has been in place since 2022 and students take an array of classes that prepare them for a career in the field.
C-Spire and TecInfo have been spreading fiber for customers underground, a slow and costly process but one that allows for fewer problems with maintenance. Ben Mize, Operations Director at TecInfo, explains.
“We’re currently participating in at least three government grants or programs to deliver high-speed Internet, the first one being the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF. Then another one is a USDA-based program called ReConnect. It’s administered through the Rural Utility Service. And then the third one is a Capital Project Fund, specifically a community Wi-Fi grant. And then we’ll be involved in the BEAD broadband equity. We applied for and were selected as a winner for that by the state of Mississippi,” he says. “And then we may be embarking on an additional USDA ReConnect grant. That affects three counties, Washington County, Sunflower County, and Bolivar County. This is all 100 percent rural averaging three houses per mile types of routes to be built.”
He notes the projects are all 100 percent underground fiber optic networks that deliver at least a gigabit speed synchronous with the ability to scale up to ten-plus gigs.
“We’ve built about a little over 200 miles of fiber in Washington and Bolivar County currently. By the time that we’re completed with the grants we’re working on we should be closer to about 650 miles.”
There about 4,200 homes in that build out. TecInfo covers Leland, portions of Greenville and smaller towns such as Arcola, Benoit, Rosedale, Gunnison, Duncan, Alligator and more.
“And then in Sunflower County, most of our build would be from around the Drew area north. Parchman all the way to Tutwiler,” he says.
Growing up on a cotton farm in Tchula, Matt Peaster certainly understands the need for high speed internet in rural areas. Now the Senior Director of Home Operations for C-Spire, he’s working to connect all the turnrow population to high speed internet.
“We’ve been able to do some relatively significant deployments in towns like Clarksdale, Greenwood, and Cleveland with a lot of success, and what you’re hearing is that people there starve for high-quality high-speed internet service, and we’ve made some significant improvements, investments in those markets. We’ve also been able to use some grant funding to go to some areas that wouldn’t have otherwise made sense,” he says. “Our goal with fiber is to continue to expand off of what we’ve done so far. Some of those towns that you see there, Greenwood, Clarksdale and Cleveland—the way that we build fiber is we edge out from where we are.”
In towns with business service with C-Spire, the company is looking for ways to expand fiber from business to residential areas.
“Our whole kind of business model is built off of its density. Because it’s so expensive on the front end to invest capital. The Delta is not dense. I grew up in a cotton farming family and the closest house to our house growing up was three miles away. If I can’t provide you service, I do want to find a solution. There have been a few different providers that have won grant funds in some of those Delta markets. I think it’s a tough nut to crack because it’s so spread out,” says Peaster.
Even with the challenges, local and national providers along with the federal and state government continue to work to bring high-speed internet to every nook and cranny and town row of the Mississippi Delta and beyond.