St James Plaindealer reports on Border to Border grant projects in their area…

The Arvig awarded project will serve 15 unserved households and 20 unserved businesses near Morgan.
Arvig-Redwood Telephone will improve service levels to this rural area, which is home to Minnesota’s annual Farmfest and relies on quality broadband service for precision agriculture applications and to monitor crops and livestock. The total eligible project cost is $62,218, with a $34,220 local match.
In Renville County, Hiawatha Broadband Communications & RS Fiber was awarded $807,966.
This project will serve 193 unserved households, 99 unserved businesses and three community anchor institutions in portions of Preston Lake, Boon Lake, Brookfield, Osceola, Kingman, Winfield, Crooks, Erickson, Sac-red Heart (North), Emmet, Flora, Henry-ville, Norfolk, Birch Cooley, Camp and Cairo townships in Renville County.
Hiawatha Broadband Communications and RS Fiber will provide improved services that officials hope will stimulate business and population growth.
The total eligible project cost is $2.07 million, with a $1.26 million local match.

– NU-Telecom was also selected as one of the companies that will receive state grants for broadband development. NU-Telecom received three of the 42 grants announced by Lt. Governor Tina Smith.
New Ulm Telecom will receive $850,486 of the $1,889,968 total project costs to build fiber connections to homes and businesses in the rural areas of Hanska and Mazeppa and in and around Bellechester. President and CEO Bill Otis said the company expects the projects to begin in the spring.
“We’re very pleased that we were selected in the border-to-border grant process,” he said. “We appreciate the support from the local businesses and residents. The grants will be utilized to extend our network and bring broadband services to customers in these rural areas, including providing Gigabit speeds via fiber-to-the home, which will exceed 2026 state speed goals.”