Frontier seeks $55 million in broadband stimulus for West Virginia

Frontier Communications, now in the process of acquiring Verizon (News - Alert) Communications operations in West Virginia, appears to have applied for broadband stimulus grants to support its trunking capabilities in West Virginia. Frontier appears to have submitted two proposals, one of $40.6 million, for a 1,793 mile of fiber optic wide area network, and a second project costing $14.5 million, including 636 miles of fiber optic cable, also for wide area trunking.

Many executives serving rural communities say that the cost of WAN trunking bandwidth is a key impediment to faster local broadband access services. The classic example is a remote community that at present has only T1 bandwidth (1.544 Mbps) available for connections between local facilities and the closest Internet point of presence...