ELLSWORTH — The Maine Community Foundation’s Community Broadband Grant Program has awarded $117,793 in grants to 13 communities across Maine. The program aims to increase the number of Maine people, communities and businesses with access to high-speed internet service and improve skills, knowledge and opportunity to effectively use the technology.
Area 2020 grantees include:
Opportunity Center of North Franklin County Inc., to begin implementation project resulting from county-wide broadband plan, running Fiber-to-the-Home in six of 36 communities: $10,000.
Town of Denmark, to engage residents in broadband goals, starting with committee outreach and ending with a network design project to expand presently poor broadband coverage: $6,000.
Town of Fryeburg, to implement a community-involved process to plan for the eventual build-out of reliable high-speed internet to serve area residents: $5,000.
Town of Harrison, to establish or upgrade affordable, accessible and quality broadband service to the entire community: $4,500.
Town of Lisbon, to create two public WiFi “hot spots” in strategic locations in Lisbon to enable universal internet connectivity and enable entrepreneurial and youth and adult educational initiatives: $2,950.
Town of Litchfield, to provide affordable broadband to the unserved or underserved while improving the digital literacy of the community: $7,000.
Town of Naples, to conduct a town-wide community needs assessment to determine if residents and business owners have adequate access to broadband internet services: $10,000.
Western Kennebec Lakes Community Broadband Association, to develop a community outreach program, conduct community surveys, review proposals and negotiate with internet service providers to improve services in the region for underserved/unserved customers: $15,000.
The program will continue in 2021. Details will be available at www.mainecf.org. The deadline for applications will be Oct. 15, 2021.
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