The Mississippi Public Service Commission unanimously approved Thursday to clear a major hurdle for one Arkansas-based broadband provider, Windstream Communications, to bring its service to underserved Mississippians in rural areas.
The other provider, Aristotle Unified Communications, will have to appear at a hearing hosted by the PSC to answer questions on whether it can provide broadband service as promised.
Both providers won auctions to receive money from the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.Under the terms of the RDOF, the two carriers had to be designated as eligible telecommunications carriers for parts of the state they seek to serve by the PSC by June 7 or risk losing their federal funds.
AUC will receive a hearing before the deadline one day before the commission’s planned meeting for June.
Even though the separate Public Utilities Staff recommended approval of both requests, Northern District Commissioner Brandon Presley led the effort to ensure that AUC would receive a hearing.
He said he had doubts on whether AUC could deliver gigabit speed (940 Megabits per second) in its areas.
Based in Little Rock, Windstream Communications wants to bring broadband service to parts of Mississippi after it won $12.63 million in the RDOF auction. The counties Windstream will service include rural parts of Hinds, Lamar, Jones and Rankin counties along with Coahoma, Copiah, Covington, Jefferson Davis, Lawrence, Lincoln and Marion counties.
Aristotle Unified Communications, also based in Little Rock, wants to bring internet service to several counties after receiving $45.17 million as part of the NexTier Consortium. AUC will bring its service to Coahoma, Issaquena, Quitman, Sharkey, Tunica and Yazoo counties.
ISPs serving Mississippi will receive more funds than all but one state, California. There will be 218,990 locations served by the 12 auction winners.
Some of the other companies winning auctions to bring broadband service to Mississippi rural areas included:
- SpaceX’s Starlink Service will receive $44 million.
- The Rural Electric Cooperative Consortium will receive $220.58 million.
- Prospero Broadband Consortium will receive $42.35 million.
- Bay Springs Telephone, which will receive $41.265 million.
- RDOF Consortium will receive $32.4 million.
- Connect Everyone LLC will receive $18.13 million.
These other companies that won RDOF funds at auction will require PSC designated as eligible carriers by September.
