The purpose of this project proposal is to construct a new, 644-mile underground middle mile fiber route that would serve some of the most rural areas in western texas, stretching from dallas to EL…

Zayo Group LLC received a $91.9 million project grant award from the Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration under the Middle Mile (Broadband) Grant Program (CFDA 11.033). The grant will fund construction of a new 644-mile underground fiber route from Dallas to El Paso, Texas to expand broadband access in rural areas. Zayo will build the middle mile infrastructure to directly or indirectly connect 236 community anchor institutions, including five currently unserved. Subrecipient Vertical Bridge will support this effort by constructing nine new 180-foot cellular towers and compounds along the fiber route to further enable wireless broadband services. Upon completion, the new telecommunications infrastructure is expected to improve connectivity and reduce the digital divide for underserved communities across 20 counties in western Texas.

Activities

Project will use fiber to build new/resilient middle mile network through UN/underserved communities with a commitment to open access and carrier neutral non-discriminatory interconnect. The period of performance is expected to be 3 years.

Expected outcomes

The project will be designed with two main deliverables: 1. Construct a new, unique, 644-mile underground middle mile fiber route that would serve some of the most rural areas in western texas, stretching from dallas to EL paso. 2. Directly or indirectly support 236 community anchor institutions (including 5 currently unserved) that will have access to the fiber network.

Intended beneficiaries

The applicant?S dallas to EL paso route has been designed to traverse underserved areas and deliver needed network resilience and world-class connectivity that does not exist today. The proposed route passes through twenty counties between dallas and EL paso, with over 27,000 blocks unserved with a rural ratio of 36% according to FCC 477 july to december 2021 and US census bureau 2020 data. The communities that will be served by this fiber network are among the most rural and underserved in the state of texas. There are 15 counties through which the proposed route passes in which the median broadband access speeds are less than 100 mbps, again according to FCC 477 july to december 2021 data. The availability of a middle mile fiber network proposed in this project will lead to higher quality broadband available in these areas. The applicant's proposed route under this project will provide middle mile fiber access to 17 counties which have a poverty rate of 11% to 24%, at or below the federal poverty level. Currently there is no contiguous open access middle mile backbone that is in place to serve isps in the community consistently. A local outage could impact the backbone for multiple towns. Current routes for the middle mile in a few places head to amarillo and denver which means routing goes out of the state. The proposed route is contained within the state allowing for linkage to other TX routes to reroute within the state. Latency will be lower, the reliability with the underground aspect will be higher, and the consistency of a purpose-built middle mile backbone will reduce the outage experience. This middle mile route will facilitate robust broadband to support remote education, telemedicine, and public safety communications in both fixed and mobile environments.

Subrecipient activities

The applicant has identified vertical bridge as a subrecipient. Vertical bridge will be responsible for construction of 9, 180' cellular towers and 75'X75' cellular compounds.