More than $50 million in line for broadband work

LEE COUNTY – What began as a study on the lack of broadband coverage in Lee County has parlayed into more than $54 million in broadband investment to bring Internet service to much of the county’s rural residents.
In 2019, the Southeast Iowa Regional & Economic Port Authority identified broadband expansion as a priority in Lee County, which spurred a study by Lee County Economic Development Group.
In 2022, SIREPA applied for funding from Lee County after the Board of Supervisors used the study and America Rescue Plan Act guidance to earmark 40% of their $6.5 million in ARPA funding to broadband work.
SIREPA applied for the entire 40% as a matching grant on behalf of Danville Telecom. Danville needed local match funding to apply for an additional $3.5 million from Iowa’s Office of the Chief Information Officer as part of state funding program through that office.
Upon securing the grant to build a fiber optic redundance loop near Keokuk and extend services to 120 additional customers, Danville Telecom went out for bids on the work and those bids came in about $1.3 million over projections, so the local communication company in conjunction with the SIREPA adjusted plans away from Shimek and toward Wever to reduce the cost of the project.
With additional federal funding in the works for broadband expansion, SIREPA submitted Intent To Qualify areas throughout the area including Lee County. Those ITQs scored high enough to qualify other private companies to invest in Internet infrastructure in the area.
This year Mediacom and Mediapolis Telephone announced they were awarded a combined $36 million in funding to provide service to more than 2,000 additional underserved and unserved addresses in the county.
Another round of funding released generated another $15.8 million to reach an additional 2,400 county rural residents.
With Danville’s new infrastructure in place, ImOn Communications came into the area and began running fiber cable throughout Des Moines and Lee County and then acquired Danville Telecom. As part of the acquisition, ImOn bought out a lease agreement SIREPA had with Danville Telecom. SIREPA owned the fiber optic loop with Danville paying lease payments for a 10-year term.
Now ImOn owns all the new infrastructure and is a new large player on the fiber optic scene in southeast Iowa.
According to SIREPA Administrator Mike Norris, the impact of the six years of efforts will bring broadband service to 4,400 previously underserved or unserved addresses with Tier 1 service, nearly all of those addresses in rural areas. The new redundancy loop also offers additional capacity and reliability for service providers in Lee County.
“When we look back over the last six years, when we started at our strategic planning, and then through all the partnerships and the deployment, the total impact of the expansion efforts, about 4,400 previously unserved or underserved addresses will have access to Tier 1 broadband service in Lee County,” Norris said.
“Nearly all of that is rural and outside urban areas. About $51 million in outside funds leveraged by the ITQ process, a new fiber optic transmission loop from the SIREPA/Danville/county partnership, all offers greater capacity and redundancy for the entire county.”
Norris said he could say with high confidence that if it hadn’t been for the transmission loop, the private investment may not have occurred because those companies wouldn’t have had the data capacity, and it wouldn’t have been profitable.
“And then finally we have a successful private-public partnership model to reflect on for future projects - and there were a lot of lessons learned,” Norris said.
“I really just want to congratulate the Board for your leadership, and the county, as well. This is just enormous success. You may have thought $51 million was a typo but it looks like it's not. The state says $51 million. I think the takeaway is that we have companies that will be investing both their own private capital, but then also public grant money, to give service opportunities to a lot of addresses in rural Lee County.
Lee County Supervisor Garry Seyb said the impact of the partnerships and foresight is more than he ever imagined three years ago.
“I can tell you that I get goosebumps. When I think about this, I know what it took at the time to make that leap with your funds,” he said.